Pious Deception (16 page)

The guacamole arrived. Warren didn’t look down. Kiernan started to ask about Zekk, but Warren was too quick.

“But you can’t use just any bag, you see that, right? The stuff’s seven hundred degrees. You’ve got to go with a ceramic that will withstand that kind of heat—the type of thing they used on the space shuttle. But the problem is the dust clogs the bag—”

“Like a vacuum cleaner.”

“Exactly,” Warren said, delighted. “But we’re not talking changing bags every month. Here it’s every few minutes. If you have to stop and change and then wait for the original one to cool and shed the buildup, you’ve got a big bottleneck. You can see that, right?”

Kiernan nodded. If Warren’s operation was near Zekk, he could provide a handy escape hole in an area where just getting a glass of water could be crucial.

“Now, what I’ve got is, to put it simply, a mechanism to shed the residue from the bags so quickly that instead of taking off one bag and putting on another you can close off the cyclone momentarily, dump the bag, open the cyclone and keep going. Whole process takes less than thirty seconds.” Warren took a large, quick drink of his beer.

Before he could get a breath, she said, “You said your works was near Hohokam Lodge. Is it anywhere near Joe Zekk’s place?”

“Not far. But Zekk doesn’t have anything to do with my works. Now the thing about the process is that whoever gets it will have shale for ten bucks less per barrel.”

“You?”

He shook his head. “Warren Works is too small. I’ll tell you, I was lucky to end up with the site. You know shale was hot a few years back when there were still D.O.E. synfuel funds. Bunch of us formed a consortium. Then when the synfuel funds went, the rest of them wrote off their losses. Left me—”

“Holding the bag?”

Warren stared, then groaned. “Actually they left me with the whole works, which was just fine by me. Particularly considering that they were the ones with the money.”

“So now you’ll put your process out for bids?”

“Right. I’m in touch with most of multinational corporations.”

The waiter arrived, smiling, with plates of steaming crispy chimichangas. The spicy smell filled the air. Even Warren abandoned his tale for the moment.

“Getting to Zekk’s place will be my excuse for stopping by the works. Can you tell me how to get to Zekk’s?”

Mouth full he nodded, then said, “I’ll give you my map. His place is a few miles before mine. There’s a metal Z by the turnoff.”

“Wonderful,” Kiernan said. “A man who is this good on directions and on food should have no trouble selling his hot-bag process.”

Warren laughed. “The demo’s already operational. You’ll love it.” He laughed again. “Well, I’ll love showing it to you. I
hope
you’ll love it. It’ll take a couple of years to showcase the process completely. The multis aren’t interested in whether the system works the first time, or a month after that. What they’re asking is Will it still be clearing bags in a year, in two years? That’s where their savings come.”

“So you’ve got to run your site for two or three years then?”

“Right. And I’ll tell you it can be a headache. Not the process. The process is great. It’s fascinating to watch. And the noise. It’s like the end of the world, with the pumps pulling up water from the river, the rush of hundreds of gallons of slurry, the rattling of the conveyor belts, and the rocks crashing down in the hoppers, and the hiss when the water hits the bag box to cool it down. You’ll love it, really.”

Kiernan forked another bite of chimichanga. Holding it midair, she said, “Just how much water does the whole process use?”

Warren smiled. “Now that could have been a problem. But I was lucky. Sylvia Necri’s the architect for the archdiocese’s retreat. I’d be in a bind without her. The retreat’s got an informal agreement for rights to the Rattlesnake River water. She’s leased them to me for the next three years. That’s plenty of time for me. And she knows damned well she’ll never break ground before that. Not with the archdiocese involved.”

“But the water … how much are we talking about?”

“It’s not just the process itself that takes water, it’s the workers taking showers, flushing the heads, it’s watering down the dust so we don’t choke: the whole business of living.”

“So how much?”

“Half an acre-foot per day, more or less.”

Kiernan whistled. “You said Sylvia Necri leased you the allotment from the retreat, the retreat that Austin Vanderhooven had been in charge of building, right?”

“Yeah?”

“How come this little retreat had all that water alloted? That’s a lot of water for the desert.”

Warren laughed. “Little retreat? This isn’t like Austin’s little prayer dome in the desert with the pink glass window.”

“Prayer dome with a pink glass window?” she asked.

But Warren was not about to be stalled. “I don’t know how big-city you are, lady, but in these parts we don’t call a seventy-room building on the apex of a hill, with meeting rooms, chapel, and bar, little. That’s not to mention the tennis courts, putting green, saunas, and the piece de resistance—the Olympic-sized pool.”

“My God, that sounds like a palace.”

Warren laughed again. “Pretty much what it’ll look like, a Spanish-style cathedral-palace. You should see Sylvia’s sketches. It’s no wonder Austin was able to get financing.”

Kiernan put down her fork. “Wait. I need to assimilate this. I’ve been thinking of the retreat as something that would replace Hohokam Lodge, a place where two or three priests could go for the weekend.”

“Well, think about the Shrivers and the Kennedys and Cuomo and whoever else holds the purse and power on the U.S. Catholic scene. You don’t invite Teddy Kennedy and tell him to take a sponge bath. You don’t ask the cardinals of the Church to golf on Astroturf. You don’t—”

“I get your point. And the whole project is under the control of the priest at Mission San Leo, right?”

“Sure, and Austin was perfect. He had the connections to raise the kind of money a place like that would take, and he wasn’t beholden to anyone in the archdiocese.”

The waiter paused beside the table. Kiernan nodded at her nearly empty plate. Warren looked protectively at his nearly full one. “And now,” Kiernan said when the waiter left, “who inherits control?”

“Bishop Dowd. The parish is under his supervision.”

“Whew! How very rewarding for the bishop.”

Warren stopped his fork midair. “Do I catch a note of snide?”

Kiernan laughed.

Warren put down the fork. “Professional reticence, eh? Okay then, let’s talk about what you’d like to do now. Music? There’s a great jazz—”

Kiernan hesitated, remembering her rule against dating men involved in a case. But rules shouldn’t fence in their makers. There was something very attractive about this man who chose his game and played it all-out. Rules could be adjusted. Warren smiled, and those blue eyes of his, which had been so intense moments before, twinkled. Rules could … She took a breath, reminding herself why she had made the rule to begin with. “I’d love to, Bud. But I’m worn out, and I have to be sharp in the morning. Investigating is strenuous business.”

He ran his fingers over her hand. “I would like to see you again.”

She smiled. “Likewise. But talk to me next week, after this case is over. I don’t dare mix business and pleasure anymore. I got burned once early on, and I’ll tell you, it looks real bad to have to get up on the stand and testify that you found a key fact under the pillow of a guy who turned out to be one of the biggest money-launderers in the Caribbean.”

N
ORMALLY
B
ISHOP
R
AYMOND
D
OWD
would have enjoyed his companion’s unspoken speculation when the waiter called him to the phone. But this was hardly a day for enjoyment, what with not having had a decent night’s sleep all week, racing back and forth between the sheriff’s office and Sylvia Necri’s apartment, avoiding the detective, and now this dinner with Bishop William Harrington, the man some had begun touting as successor to the archbishop. Harrington had barely settled into his seat before he started nosing around about Vanderhooven’s death. Dowd’s thoughts ricocheted off his skull. He hadn’t dared to order a third drink, and he’d barely tasted his beef Wellington. He took the call in an alcove off the bar. “Bishop Dowd here.”

“Dowd, what the hell got into you taking pictures of my son?”

Dowd stiffened. It took him a moment to think what Vanderhooven was talking about. When he did, he smiled. “You could call it foresight. Those pictures convinced the detective Austin couldn’t have got himself into that position.”

“You mean to tell me that my son is hanging there with his prick sticking out, and you run to get your thirty-five millimeter like some goddamned tourist?”

How much had Vanderhooven had to drink? He sounded as if he could slip out of control any moment. Wired and exhausted himself, Dowd could nonetheless spot the signs. An apology, even an explanation, would have calmed Vanderhooven down. Another time Dowd would have given both. Now he was too tired to placate Vanderhooven. “She asked about the knots. It was a good thing I had those prints.”

“What’s the matter with you, are you some kind of pervert, Dowd? What’s going on in the Church here? Now look, Dowd, I want those photographs destroyed. I want them and the negatives here tonight. I’ll destroy them myself.”

The corners of Dowd’s mouth twitched. “The detective, Mr. Vanderhooven, she wants enlargements.” He paused as long as he dared. “To see the knots better, she said.”

“She’s seen enough, dammit. Now get that film over here.”

The smile took hold. “What shall I tell her then?”

“Think of something. Tell her the film was destroyed. Tell her anything.”

“Doesn’t matter, right? She won’t believe it anyway.” If he hadn’t been through so much he would have controlled himself. But now there was no concealing the delight in his voice. Even Vanderhooven caught it.

“Dowd! Are you forgetting what’s at stake here—pictures like that of a priest under your supervision? Pictures
you
took; if word of that got out, Dowd … You created this problem, you deal with it. You priests have plenty of practice convincing people. Think back to eating meat on Fridays. That was a mortal sin—straight road to Hell—for hundreds of years. Then all of a sudden it was fine. You guys pulled that off. Lying about the photos’ll be a piece of cake.”

Dowd winced. It was a sore point but not one he was going to defend now. “Mr. Vanderhooven, I share your concern about the film getting out. But as you mentioned, I am well aware of its potential. You can rest assured I’m taking good care of it.”

Dowd could hear Vanderhooven’s sharp intake of breath. “Dowd, maybe you think I won’t use my connections in the archdiocese—”

“You’re right. I don’t. Anyone you spoke to would want to know the content of the photos, and I would tell them. You’ll just have to trust me.”

When Philip Vanderhooven slammed down the phone, Bishop Raymond Dowd was still smiling.

K
IERNAN HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT
her headache during dinner with Bud Warren. Now what exactly did that suggest? Whatever, the headache returned full force on the drive back.

She pulled the Jeep into the parking lot and jumped down, landing with a thud that reverberated throughout her head. “Dumb!” she muttered. She walked across the lot. Two more packages of Alka-Seltzer and a night’s sleep—that would do it.

The insistent ringing of the phone came through the motel-room door. Jamming her key in the lock she opened the door and raced for the receiver. “Kiernan O’Shaughnessy here.”

“Ah, Dr. O’Shaughnessy, this is Elias Necri. I hate to disturb you …”

“What can I do for you?”

“It’s been a long day,” Necri said, “and Austin’s death, well, you can understand how I feel. We were close friends. It’s so sudden, so, well, you know how it is.”

She pictured his handsome face, the circles beneath his large, sad eyes. She sank onto the bed and waited for him to continue.

“After you left, I was thinking about Austin. I had patients, and that took my mind off him for a while, but whenever I was alone I kept coming back to the question of why he would kill himself, or be killed. And, well, Doctor, I realized that while we do want to present his affairs to the parish and the public at large, and even his family, in the best light, as his friend it is my duty to tell you everything I know, not to hold anything back. And besides,” he said, his voice just noticeably lighter, “I’m sure you’d find out soon enough.”

“Yes?” she prompted, ignoring his flattery. Pulling the receiver cord taut, she reached for the water glass on the desk.

“The thing is, well—I’m not making any accusations, you understand—but I just can’t dismiss the question of Joe Zekk.”

Me neither, Kiernan thought. In view of Philip Vanderhooven’s refusal to discuss Zekk and his proposition, Necri’s call could be a real boon. “Tell me about Joe Zekk. You said Austin called him a deadbeat.”

“Austin didn’t delude himself about Zekk. But he didn’t break off the friendship, either.” Necri sounded more relaxed, almost as if he was reciting a prepared speech. “They started seminary together. Zekk dropped out the next summer. That was years ago. But last year Zekk followed Austin here. He’s not a Westerner. The mountains of Arizona aren’t a place the average New Yorker elects to come.”

“Austin chose Phoenix.”

“There may have been professional reasons for that.”

She reached for the water carafe. Too far. Hell, let the head throb! She sprawled forward on the bed. Speaking louder, over the pain, she said, “But something did draw Austin to Arizona. So maybe he talked up the area to Zekk, his friend.”

“Perhaps,” Necri said slowly. “And of course we can’t always see what our friends see in their friends. But Joe Zekk, well, to be honest, he’s not a guy I’d want to leave near an unlocked drug cabinet.”

“You mean he’s an addict?” That could open a whole new avenue of possibilities.

“No, no. Just a figure of speech.”

“A crook?” she asked with less hope.