Beach Music (42 page)

Soon after I had been brought to the hospital, Jordan had appeared on television sets all over the nation as the ambulance doors opened and I was wheeled into the emergency room. As a Trappist priest who had spent much of his adult life in a monastery, the one thing Jordan little understood was the power and rapidity of modern communication. The expression of grief and horror on Jordan’s face when he caught sight of me became famous the moment it was flashed by satellite into all the newsrooms of the world. As he took my hand and leaned down to whisper the words of the last rites in my ear while I was wheeled from a ramp down the corridors of the alerted hospital, the lines of worry and compassion on his angular face came to define the dynamic, rugged symmetry of Italy’s own communal agony. His face became famous on the peninsula within a twenty-four-hour period. By accident, the conferral of Jordan’s anguish became an eloquent gift to Italy. His face expressed everything that Italy felt about the slaughter of the holiday travelers. Italian journalists began to search for the mysterious priest. But Jordan sank back into the hidden depths of the priest-haunted city as photographs of him began to appear on the front pages of American newspapers.

On the Isle of Orion, General Elliott recognized his son immediately. When the same tape rolled again fifteen minutes later on CNN, he copied it so he could return to it at his leisure. General Elliott’s face was unreadable, but his son’s face had always been a book open for all the world’s inspection. The well-trimmed beard hid the dimple he had inherited from his mother. But the handiwork of fifteen years had not changed his son’s face, only deepened it, made it more recognizable. Jordan’s eyes were unforgettable and his father had certainly not forgotten. He told his wife Celestine nothing and she did not hear about my misfortune until late the next day. By then, as we later learned, the general had already gotten in touch with Mike Hess and Capers Middleton. That night, they all compared the photographs of the priest coming out of the confessional on the Aventine hill with the priest who met my ambulance at the hospital in Trastevere. In a secret phone conference the next day, all agreed they had found their man.

His being captured by the camera’s eye for just that split second had brought on a wave of visitors Jordan never would have wanted, but immediately after, Jordan vanished into the terra-cotta silences of monastic Rome. Before the surgeons had returned me to my hospital room, Jordan had moved from an obscure monastery located in one of the more uncelebrated abbeys in the Caelian hill to a halfway house in Trastevere that cared for priests who had problems with drug addiction. A barber had shaved his beard and he was issued a pair of tortoiseshell glasses.

An underground machine had gone into operation as soon as Interpol in Rome headquarters had received a photograph of young Jordan Elliott and myself after a baseball game our senior year in high school. It was accompanied by a blowup of the photograph of Jordan looking tenderly down at my body as it was being wheeled hastily up the emergency ramp. A fingerprinter’s assistant at Interpol had copied the information and sent it to her brother who worked for a monsignor who oversaw a committee to reform the system of accounting at the Vatican Bank. Jordan Elliott was wanted for questioning in the death of a young Marine corporal and his girlfriend that had taken place in 1971. The bulletin indicated that Jordan might have changed his name and was believed to be masquerading
as a Catholic priest of an unknown order. Jordan Elliott was described as being very intelligent, physically powerful, and perhaps armed as well. General Elliott had secretly notified Naval Intelligence, who got in touch with their connections in Interpol and Italy.

This was the first time since he had escaped to Europe that Jordan knew for sure that he was a hunted man. Though he had long suspected it, he had withdrawn from his life in South Carolina with such finality—there had even been a funeral service—that he had thought any pursuit of him had long since miscarried through lack of evidence or a fresh trail. Only his mother and I were partners in his conspiracy. Jordan had lulled himself into a feeling of invisibility and now, as he watched his father, he realized that his concern for me had put both of us in a dangerous situation.

The general positioned himself in the shadows of the fountain’s splashing sarcophagus, made of Egyptian granite, surrounded by illegally parked cars.

He was still uncommonly handsome, Jordan thought, as he studied his father’s regular features with his weather-beaten golfer’s face and tanned, muscled arms. Jordan also noticed the first signs of wattles erupting beneath his father’s chin. He doubted a son had ever feared a father as Jordan had feared his and the word “father,” so sacred and primal in world religions, so central to the harmonic mystery of Catholicism, had always sent a shivering down his spine. It came to Jordan not as a two-syllable sound of a sweet-breathed, comfortable man armed only with rattles and lullabies, but as an army in the field with blood on its hands.

“Father.” Jordan said the word out loud. Your father is home, your father is home, your father’s home.… The four most feared words of his boyhood coming from his sweet-lipped mother’s mouth. Jordan’s fear and hatred of his father had always been the purest and most unclassifiable thing about him. The power of that hatred had shaken the composure of every confessor that Jordan had gone to for the forgiveness of his sins in his career as a priest. His abbot had told him as recently as a year ago that the kingdom of heaven would be denied to him if he could not find it in his heart to forgive his father. As he studied his father he realized that he was no
nearer to that heavenly kingdom than he had been as a ten-year-old boy weeping after still another beating and dreaming of the day he would kill his father with his bare hands.

His mother had written to Jordan—his father wanted a reconciliation, and Jordan was preparing for that rendezvous when his youthful photograph arrived in the Rome offices of Interpol and made its secret way through the labyrinthine alleyways and courtyards of the Vatican to his abbot’s small office. Jordan thought his father had betrayed him. But he also thought it was possible that Capers Middleton had sold out his old friend as a dramatic setpiece for his governor’s campaign in South Carolina. His abbot agreed. The abbot possessed an Italian’s scrupulous mistrust of politicians, and also a sweet but starchy sentimentality about fatherhood.

A few days after I returned home, Maria answered the doorbell and escorted Mike and Capers into the living room where I was with Ledare. Mike’s impatience was a palpable force in the room and he paced beside the windows, a motor on overdrive somewhere in his central nervous system. But Capers was unflappable and controlled and seemed interested in taking a careful inventory of all my antiques and paintings. As his eyes wandered among my possessions, he said, “You have nice things. What a surprise, Jack.”

“Take a quick inventory, then get the hell out of my house,” I said.

Mike interrupted quickly. “This is a business call. About our movie. You don’t have to fall in love with Capers. Just listen to him.”

“I don’t like Capers,” I said. “I tried to make that clear in Waterford.”

“You were clear, but wrong,” Mike said.

“Mike,” Ledare said, “you shouldn’t’ve done this to either one of us.”

“You’re under contract, darling,” Mike said. “I’m not required to run things by you. Ask the Writers Guild.”

“Capers is a lit match with us,” Ledare said to Mike. “We’re the gasoline. You know it well.”

“We both wanted to see if Jack’s all right. We were worried,” Mike said.

“I’ve been praying for you,” Capers said, at last.

“Mike,” I said. “There’s a Bible on my night table. Turn to the New Testament and start reading the story about Judas Iscariot. Capers’ll find it eerily autobiographical.”

“The cat’s never at a loss for words,” Mike said in admiration.

“Ol’ Jack,” Capers said. “Always comparing himself to Jesus.”

“Only when I’m with the man who once crucified me and all my friends,” I said, feeling cold and angry. “Normally I model myself after Julia Child.”

“Your shooting was headline news in South Carolina,” Capers said, his voice even and eerily controlled. “As soon as I heard, I made plans to fly to Rome to visit you in the hospital. In fact, there’ll be an article about our visit in the state newspaper next Sunday.”

“Accompanied by photographs?” I guessed.

“How much will it cost me?” said Capers.

“More than you’ve got,” I said.

“You didn’t find Jordan,” Ledare said. “That’s why you’re here.”

“We didn’t even get corroboration that Jordan Elliott’s alive,” Capers said. “We tried the Franciscans. The Jesuits. The Paulists. The Trappists. The Benedictines. I had the help of the Bishop of Charleston. Mike was in constant contact with the Cardinal of Los Angeles. Something has gone wrong and the whole system has shut down on us.

“We circulated all the photographs taken by the detective. Not one Franciscan in this city can make a positive identification of this bearded American priest. Every Franciscan we talked to was sure this man was not a member of their order. Yet he wears their habit and he heard confessions in one of their most important churches.”

“Tell Jack the weird part,” Mike said.

“I was getting to that,” Capers said. “We got an interview with the head honcho of the Franciscans. The main man. The guy was a born leader, carried himself like a prince. He gives us some of the same old, same old. Looks at the photographs. Never seen the guy. But then he said something interesting. He told us point-blank that the Franciscans as an order and this abbot in particular don’t take
kindly to pressure from Americans trying to track down a member of their or any other order wanted for war crimes in America. Then he asked us to leave his office. But, Jack,” Capers continued, leaning forward, “we never told anyone about any war crimes. We were just looking for Jordan. We never told anyone why.”

“So what?” I said. “You think the Franciscans aren’t going to do some checking on their own? They’ve been around since the thirteenth century.”

“Did you tip Jordan off?” Capers asked.

“Listen good, Capers. I don’t want to have to go over this again. I was in the hospital with all the lights out,” I said. “But I would have warned him if I’d known you two were coming. I’d have suggested he do exactly what he’s done … go underground until you guys go away.”

“If there’s no Jordan, there’s no television deal,” Mike said. “There’s no movie.”

Ledare looked at Mike. “Why would Jack care about that?”

“Because if there’s no movie, there’s no presidential pardon for Jordan Elliott,” Mike said. “This is all part of a big plan, Jack.”

“I see,” Ledare said. “The mini-series ends with Capers Middleton getting a presidential pardon for his old friend Jordan Elliott. Then at the governor’s inauguration in Columbia, the Middleton backfield will be united at last, a symbol of Governor Middleton’s ability to heal the wounds that have torn his generation asunder.”

“No, baby. Fine as far as it goes,” Mike said. “But take it further. Take it six years down the road at the Republican National Convention. Or wait a full ten, when Capers drops his hat in the ring for president of the United States.”

“Be still, my passport,” I said, shaking my head sadly. “If I truly loved my country, I’d throw you right out that open window, Capers, and let you free fall five stories to the piazza below. But alas, my patriotism is all talk.”

“Whoever your opponent is,” Ledare said, “I’ll write speeches for him. I’ll work for free and grant interviews to every tabloid in the country. I’ll give them the names and measurements of every bimbo you slept with during our hellish years of marriage.”

“You won’t do anything because of the kids,” Capers said matter-of-factly.

“They’ll be old enough then and I won’t care what they think.”

“Your weakness, dear, is that you’ll always care too much what they think,” said Capers, going for the kill. “You’re very much aware that Mother’s Day is not at the top of their list of favorite holidays.”

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Mike said. “Are you going to help us find Jordan or not, Jack? You signed a contract, too.”

“Cup your hand to your ear, Mike,” I said. “Please listen to me this time. We have already had one painful meeting about this and I don’t look forward to another. I won’t help you at all because I hate your good buddy Capers. Is that clear enough?”

“You’d describe your feelings toward me as hatred?” Capers asked.

“Yes,” I said, “that would eloquently sum it all up.”

“Is there nothing I can do to change the way you feel?” Capers asked.

“I’m afraid not, Capers. Sorry, old chum.”

“Let me level with you, Jack,” Mike said, looking at Capers who nodded at him.

“The movie needs Jordan because none of us knows his whole story. He’s the key to it all. I need to sign him up or I don’t think I can sell it to one of the networks. Got it? That’s my professional interest. Now, Capers: The Democrats are going to try to highlight what Capers did to his friends in college. They’ve collected photographs of Capers surfing with Jordan, and of all of us triumphant after we won the state championship in football. Get the picture? I’ve seen the ads they’re writing up. The stuff is catastrophic.”

“So this has nothing to do with friendships or nostalgia or simple regret,” I said.

“Nothing,” Ledare answered. “It has only to do with Capers’ favorite topic … Capers Middleton.”

“You’re not as pretty when you’re cynical,” Capers said.

“But I’m a lot smarter, aren’t I?” she shot back.

“It’s a mean world you’re a part of, isn’t it, Capers?” I said.

Capers answered, “It’s mean for all of us. Style is what we mean by how we manage it.”

“Style, you know about,” said Ledare. “But, darling, substance is where you draw a blank.”

“Tell Jordan we’d like to meet with him,” Mike said. “We’re in contact with his father. We’ve got a win-win proposition for him.”

“I get it,” I said. “Capers is the hero of our movie.”