Man Who Loved God (20 page)

“I know. But as soon as my brother learned you’d gone, it was as if Detroit’s only doctor had left the city and an epidemic of some sort was about to strike.

“Believe me, Bob … please, please believe me: I am not now, nor do I expect to be an expert religious resource for the police department—in this or any other city.”

“Good. That’s a good resolution.”

“But” —Tully’s tone was impish—“I do have a solution for this murder case that is completely outside the police investigation.”

“You’re incorrigible!” Koesler laughed and hung up.

Sitting in the chapel of McGovern Funeral Home, Tully smiled as he recalled the conversation. Immediately he composed himself and reverted to a serious mien as he returned to his people watching.

A good-sized crowd was gathering. As he expected, he knew almost none in the group. Then a tall, slender black man, bald, with neatly trimmed facial hair, swept down the aisle, trailing a couple of men who had to be bodyguards. It was a safe guess that this was Donald Aker, mayor of Detroit.

Father Tully experienced a momentary flush of pride in being of the same race as this dynamic leader who believed so completely in his once-beleaguered city.

The mayor paced himself expertly as he moved toward the bier and the widow. He greeted those within reach. He smiled, but a restrained smile befitting the gravity of the moment. Pound for pound, thought Tully, this was as skillful a working of a room as he’d ever witnessed.

It seemed as if the mayor spent considerable time comforting the widow. In reality he was in and out in no more than a very few minutes.

He and his entourage exited the same way they’d entered—the mayor continuing to work the room as he moved out. Undoubtedly he was headed toward the bank that, but for a gun, would have been opened by the now deceased. Today was the official opening. Within minutes, Mayor Aker would be working a crowd at the newest branch of Adams Bank and Trust, where a minute of silence would be observed in memory of its martyred manager.

Then, as if in a rite of pageantry, a procession entered at the chapel’s rear. All were stylishly attired in dark mourning garb.

First came Joel Groggins, unaccompanied. He shook hands with the widow, who, even if not dressed as expensively as the others, easily was the most attractive of the many attractive women present. Groggins touched Mrs. Ulrich’s arm as he spoke with her.

Father Tully guessed Groggins was needlessly explaining his wife’s absence. Naturally, Nancy’s presence was required at the bank she’d inherited from Al Ulrich.

Next came Lou and Pat Durocher. Pat’s face was shadowed behind the black mesh of a semi-veil. She and Barbara turned their faces at an angle from each other and kissed air.

While Pat paused to view the body in the open casket, Lou said something to Barbara, in response to which she nodded vigorously. Tully couldn’t know or even guess what had been said. But he noted that Lou Durocher seemed somehow rumpled without actually being rumpled. Could he be nursing a hangover?

Then came Jack and Marilyn Fradet. Marilyn, considerably more at home with the widow than Pat had been, put both hands on Barbara’s shoulders, and they stood facing each other. Whatever Marilyn said caused Barbara to smile.

Marilyn viewed the body briefly, then moved to a reserved chair.

Jack, again evidently uncomfortable out of working attire, seemed awkward as he stooped to whisper something. It had to be only a whisper because he leaned almost against Barbara’s ear while speaking. Barbara turned her head in his direction and whispered something in return. Jack then seated himself next to his wife. He made no effort to view the body.

Next, Martin and Lois Whitston took their turn.

Lois gave Barbara a reserved hug, patted her shoulder, said something briefly, glanced hastily at the body, and went to her chair.

Martin addressed Barbara vigorously. His voice was clearly more audible than his predecessors’. Tully could see some of those seated nearby lean forward as if trying to listen in.

Barbara hastily grabbed Martin’s arm, cutting off any further speech. Quietly she said a few words. He nodded, left her side, and moved to the casket. He appeared to be praying. Maybe he was, thought Father Tully. Just because the priest assumed Whitston had no religious affiliation didn’t mean Whitston couldn’t pray—or even that he had no religious affiliation.

Finished, Whitston seated himself.

Last came Tom Adams. Of everyone here, Adams seemed most moved by this death. He was the antithesis of the robust host of his award dinner. Then he’d been very much in command; now he seemed somewhat lost.

As Whitston left Barbara, Adams made no immediate move to come forward. It was several seconds before he finally stepped up to her.

Now it looked as if the widow was consoling the mourner rather than vice versa. Adams’s shoulders shook. He appeared to be fighting back tears. It was most affecting.

A memory stirred in Father Tully. The award dinner: Tully recalled watching Barbara Ulrich slip some sort of missive to each of the men in this hierarchy. Jack, the comptroller; Lou, the mortgage man; Martin, in commercial lending; and Tom, the CEO.

Now the same cast had shared something with Mrs. Ulrich.

Tully wondered about that. Especially since Barbara suspected that one of them had arranged for her husband’s death—a suspicion she’d shared with the priest. He had advised her to follow his brother’s admonition: to let the police do the police work. He fervently hoped that she would take his advice.

What must be going through her mind? What passed between her and her suspects just now? Did it have something to do with the notes she’d given to them at the dinner?

He glanced at his watch. A few minutes after ten. Mr. McGovern closed the doors, a signal that the service, such as it was, would begin.

Father Tully stepped up to the bier. He looked briefly at the corpse. Traditionally, those who attend viewings make comments that run from a simple, “My condolences,” to the least common denominator, “He looks so natural,” to the ridiculous, “He never looked better.”

As far as Tully was concerned, the American Indians, among other peoples who lived with nature, had the best method of dealing with human remains: wrap them in a hammock, suspend it from two tall trees, and allow the birds and other animals to fold the deceased back into nature.

That method was not likely to become popular in today’s society.

Personally, Tully thought the mortician had done a workmanlike job on Al Ulrich. He looked, in slumber of course, just as he had when the priest had met him for the first and final time last week.

Father Tully anticipated no problem in delivering this eulogy. Once he had introduced himself, a priest only lately arrived from Dallas, everyone would accept that he’d had little opportunity to know Al Ulrich other than fleetingly. It was easy to be credible while speaking vaguely about a deceased whom one had known only in passing.

He would make no apologies for being a Catholic priest who had been invited to deliver this eulogy. At the same time he did not want to exclude those in this gathering who were not Catholics—Protestants, Jews, or even merely unaffiliated theists.

He would point out that Jesus, for many the most important person who ever lived, sought the company of those whom polite society avoided. He was there for those who needed Him no matter who these needy happened to be.

When the self-righteous dragged before Jesus a woman taken in the act of adultery, he prevented the mob from executing her. His closest companions were the blue-collar workers of that day: fishermen, a tax collector.

There was no class consciousness in His life in any sense. He could be found at table with anyone from the very wealthy to the poorest of the poor.

The next point needed to be presented cautiously. Tom Adams was not Jesus Christ. But it was his decision that was putting a financial facility at the service of those who tended to be forgotten, overlooked, ignored.

Nor was Al Ulrich a messiah. But he
had
volunteered to lead this effort. He
sought
the position.

While neither Adams nor Ulrich was any place close to divinity, nonetheless what they tried to do and what they did was good by nearly anyone’s standard.

That was Father Tully’s outline.

He turned to the assembled group. They were looking at him expectantly, attentively.

All except Barbara Ulrich. She seemed lost in thought.

“Good morning. My name is Father Zachary Tully. I am a Josephite priest from Dallas, Texas. I was asked to say a few words this morning.

“I did not know Al Ulrich well. We met but once. And that was last week. However, I am very well aware of what Al Ulrich and” —he inclined his head slightly in the CEO’s direction—“Tom Adams were attempting to accomplish in the midst of Detroit’s inner city.

“Their enterprise was not unlike at least part of the mission of Jesus Christ.”

To this point, Barbara Ulrich heard Father Tully. Then his image grew faint and her attention began to lapse.

It was all coming back to her.

Seventeen

Al Ulrich could have been her ticket to the promised land.

Barbara Ulrich gazed past Father Tully and contemplated her late husband.

How had she come from there to here?

It had all started with Daddy. Daddy and his damnable “love games.” Then the change she’d felt inside her. The mistaken diagnosis, partly due to her reluctance to reveal what she instinctively sensed to be her shame.

Mother prying the details from her in the hospital.

That sight! She would never, could never, forget the tiniest detail. The broken “doll” they had taken from her, its head crushed and shattered.

For a long while after the abortion, she couldn’t return to the normal world. There were dreams—nightmares. It was a mercy she never saw her father again, though his absence contributed heavily to the unnaturalness of her home life. Between that and the unconventional atmosphere it all added up to a deeply dysfunctional household.

Mother had a lovely home sans husband. So she no longer needed entertain her boyfriends in cars and motels. Barbara had to make room for “Uncle” Peter and “Uncle” Roy and “Uncle” Lloyd. And, as time passed, other similarly premised relations.

To give the devil his due, mother Claire made certain that none of her suitors ever got familiar with Babs.

It had not taken Barbara long to identify the sounds coming from her mother’s bedroom. Schoolmates were liberal in providing details of sex, adult style. Some of the information was imaginative fiction. Barbara’s experience with Daddy provided cold facts to straighten out in her mind the actual process of “lovemaking.”

She was a high school teenager. She was gorgeous. She would have nothing to do with boys. The boys, hormones raging, were all over Barbara—sometimes literally. She fought them off.

Claire Simpson was spared one of the curses of mothering a teenage girl. She never had to worry that Babs was being led down a primrose path to perdition. If anything, Mother was concerned that her spectacularly beautiful daughter was headed toward a cloistered convent without the benefit of organized religion.

Claire sent Barbara to a psychologist—a woman.

There was an immediate at-oneness between Babs and Dr. Hunter—or Joyce, as the doctor promptly permitted.

During therapy, Barbara was able to vent all her repressed hostility toward her father, and even her mother. As a direct result of therapy, Barbara became a far more well-adjusted teen. She attended mixed parties. Eventually, she even went on dates. Her one major fear was pregnancy. She knew that should she become pregnant and there was no miscarriage, the child would be carried to term and be born.

This led to a dilemma. In no way did Barbara want a child. A child was not part of any plan she could envision for the short or long term. Yet her memory of her involuntary abortion was so powerful she could never repeat that. If she became pregnant, she would have the baby she didn’t want. She strongly doubted that she could give up a child for adoption. So the master plan was:
don’t get pregnant.

This decision placed a considerable burden on both her and her dates. After all, the hormones were raging.

However, none of her dates could claim that he was unaware of the ground rules. If, driven by tormented testosterone, an attempt at intercourse was made, in effect it could only be labeled rape.

It was no surprise then that, among many of the boys in her graduating class, Barbara was known as the Virgin Queen.

However, she was making progress. After all, she was attending parties and going on dates. And that was more, much more, than she could have attempted before becoming the patient of Dr. Joyce Hunter.

In college she was able to relax some of her rigid rules of dating. She attended Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.

One eternally popular song, “I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo,” was written about, this quaint city. It was sometimes known as Mall City, with the claim that it had preceded even Minneapolis with a downtown traffic-free shopping mall. If Mary Tyler Moore had launched her cap in Kalamazoo, things might have been very different.

As it is, Kalamazoo boasts a couple of colleges, a university, some hospitals, and lots of medical specialists. It is also the hometown of noted author and poet, James Kavanaugh.

The highly intellectual level of life in the Mall City prompted Barbara to reevaluate her own coed life. Was she shriveling her personality by not mixing more freely with her fellow students? She determined to wade a bit more deeply into the mainstream of campus life.

Which did not, in any way, mean that all barriers were lowered. She insisted on plenty of protection for her partners, as well as taking stringent precautions herself.

Had she been even a tad less glamorous and attractive, she would never have been able to enforce her prophylactic paradise. But even with all her caveats, her dance card was always full.

Still, she couldn’t see the point of it all.