Man Who Loved God (33 page)

“Really!” Lieutenant Tully protested, all the while smiling at his brother.

“Humor me,” Father Tully said. “I’ve got the perfect cast of characters for this game right here and now. Playing against each other will be Father Koesler and my brother.

“Now, I’m going to tell you a story. Neither of you may interrupt me. Hear me out and then tell me the identity of the rich man.”

By this time the dessert and coffee had been served.

“Okay” Father Tully commenced, after first taking a sip of coffee. “The rich man in this story is also very powerful. What separates him from most other rich and powerful men is his love of God. He religiously kept the first half of the great commandment to love the Lord God with all his strength and with all his mind and heart. He wasn’t always strong on the second part of the commandment—that being to love all others in like manner. But he was outstanding in his love of God. It was a love that could prove costly to him. But he would meet that cost to maintain, demonstrate, and prove this love of God.”

Zoo was smiling. Koesler was not.

“In the course of giving himself generously to God, he angered his wife. Every chance she got she scolded him because he was, in her eyes, making a fool of himself for his God.

“The result was not pleasant for him—or for either of them, for that matter. The man was forced to choose between getting respect from his wife or giving to God. Loving God as he did, the man had no real choice—and his wife had no chance at all: she was cast aside.

“Now, enter into the rich man’s life a woman of outstanding beauty. In addition, she was extremely effective in the art of seduction. After shedding his wife, the rich man had a definite gap in his life. He filled that gap with the very willing, beautiful woman.

“The fact that the woman was married to a man in the service of the rich man made no difference: passion was the undisputed winner. As a matter of fact, the married man himself was so dedicated to the rich man’s service that he had no time for his own wife.

“Then the wife became pregnant. The rich man had to be the father. Her husband had not had relations with her for months.

“The rich man tried to get the married man and his wife back together. But the married man would have none of it.”

Now Father Koesler was smiling. Good, thought Father Tully; both his brother and Koesler had solved the mystery at exactly the proper time for each.

“Now the rich man managed to place the married man in harm’s way. And in that place of peril, the married man was killed.”

“Now,” Father Tully concluded, “who is the rich man?”

“David,” said Father Koesler.

“David! Who the hell is David?” exclaimed Zoo. “The rich man is Tom Adams!”

“He’s both,” Father Tully said.

“Both!” Koesler and Zoo said simultaneously.

“Father Koesler is talking about King David—in the Old Testament,” Father Tully explained, mostly for his brother’s benefit. “He fits perfectly the description of the rich man in my story. He loves God totally. In a ceremony welcoming the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, King David programs a massive celebration, during which, as the Bible says, David, nearly naked, ‘dances with abandon before the Lord.’

“His wife, Michal, ‘despised him in her heart.’ When David gets home, Michal makes fun of his behavior in showing his love of God so completely. So David dumps Michal.

“Compare that to Tom Adams, whose generosity to the Church is his way of showing his love of God. His wife gets angry with him for giving away so much money. So he divorces his wife.

“Later, when Israel is at war, David is taking an evening stroll on the roof of his palace. On the roof of a nearby home, an outstandingly beautiful woman named Bathsheba is bathing. She doesn’t seem to be a woman of much reserve.

“When her husband, Uriah, is off at war, Bathsheba and David get it on, as I believe they say nowadays. Bathsheba finds herself pregnant. Uriah can’t be the father; he hasn’t been home in months.

“David calls Uriah back from the battle lines, gets him drunk and tells him to go home, that his wife misses him. But keeping faith with his comrades in arms still in the trenches, Uriah instead spends the night on the cold, hard floor of David’s palace.

“Since David cannot claim that Uriah sired the child his wife will give birth to, David tells his general to put Uriah in the forefront of the battle and leave him there to die.

“Which is exactly what happens.

“Now, back to Tom Adams. Tom is not a king, of course, but he
is
wealthy and powerful. And, like David, Tom loves God. And because of that love, he is very generous. David was exuberant in welcoming the ark into Jerusalem. In his place I think Tom would do the same. It’s just that three millennia later it’s a different era. Nowadays one doesn’t dance before the Ark; one sends money. And Tom certainly sends money; the Josephites can testify to that.

“David’s devotion is mocked by his wife, Michal. Tom’s generosity is mocked by his wife, Mickey. Each man discards his wife.

“David is seduced by Bathsheba. Tom is seduced by Barbara. Both women are married to men each of whom is singularly devoted to his chief. Bathsheba and Barbara each become pregnant. The time factor makes it impossible for each husband to be the father.

“David tries to get Uriah drunk and send him home where his wife will seduce him and then claim he is the child’s father. Nancy Groggins told me that Al Ulrich told her that Tom tried to get him and Barbara back together again. Al took that attempt as evidence of his idolized boss’s effort to patch up the marriage. Whereas, in reality, Tom was trying the same trick that David tried. Both David and Tom failed.

“By the way, have you noticed the similarity of names? Barbara-Bathsheba; Ulrich-Uriah; Mickey-Michal. Purely a coincidence, I suppose.

“Anyway,” Father Tully continued before anyone could reply, “David, being commander-in-chief as it were, then ordered that Uriah be placed in the front ranks of the battle and left there to be killed. In this, David was successful.

“The evening of the award dinner Tom told me he was leaning toward naming Nancy Groggins manager of the new branch in the risky neighborhood. Later that evening, Barbara passed notes to the foursome, announcing her pregnancy. The next day, Tom announced that Al would be the manager. Tom’s intention was the same as David’s.

“I’m sure that on the part of both Tom and King David there was remorse that their evil plot worked. Still, for their purposes, it had all been worthwhile.

“David married Bathsheba. Tom was about to marry Barbara. Bathsheba’s child became desperately ill. David did all he could for the child, but it died as punishment for David’s sin.

“And all this by way of explaining why I was certain, when Tom told me he was the father of Barbara’s child but that he had not killed her, that he was telling the truth. The minute he said that, all the pieces fell into place: I saw the striking similarities between King David and Tom.”

“Do you mean,” asked Father Koesler, “that Tom Adams was consciously imitating David?”

“No, I don’t think so. But with Tom Adams we are dealing with a person who makes the Bible his guide in life. Let me give you an example: Tom knew I was in the process of building a church for my people in Dallas. He wanted to make up what was lacking in our building fund. He gave me a blank check.”

“A blank check!” Father Koesler had never seen one.

“You know why? Because he was identifying with the Good Samaritan,” Father Tully explained.

“My God, he’s right,” Koesler reflected. “In effect, that’s what the Good Samaritan did: he promised to reimburse the innkeeper for whatever additional expense was needed to take care of the injured man. A blank check …”

“The man is amazing,” said Father Tully. “I can’t think of anyone who tries harder to live out what he’s learned from his Bible.

“But I doubt that Tom was conscious of how closely he was paralleling the actions of King David. If he had been aware, I’m sure that, being the good man that he is, he would have pulled up short, confessed his sin, and tried to make amends. Even though those Bible stories are so real to Tom that he can fall into living them without even realizing what he’s doing, had he recognized the parallel, he would have reflected on David’s sin and thus, by extension, on his own.

“And that, finally, is why I believed Tom when he said he fathered the child but didn’t murder the wife. He was ready to do everything King David did. David married the mother and did his best to care for the child.

“I believed Tom Adams when he said he had proposed to Barbara Ulrich. He was going to do more than just support her financially and provide for their child; he was going to take care of Barbara and help nurture their child. So … if Tom didn’t murder Barbara Ulrich, someone else had to have done it. Enter the police.” Father Tully made a sweeping “ta-da” gesture in the direction of his brother.

“It wasn’t that hard,” Zoo demurred. “By the time I got to Fradet’s office, the case was almost on a platter. The technicians had already come up with some interesting prints and we wanted to try for a match. We were just getting to that phase when you came up with Adams and Fradet.

“We were going to check everybody’s prints. Now, we had to book Adams on a charge of assault, and we wanted Fradet to sign a complaint. While we had them we wanted to print them both. Adams didn’t make much fuss. By that time he was almost a zombie. Fradet objected. Then I told him we’d picked up some prints at the crime scene. I said that what we were doing was as much to eliminate suspects as to implicate anybody. With that, he agreed.

“The bottom line was, he matched.”

“Then why did he agree?” Koesler asked.

“He was sure he hadn’t left any incriminating prints. He knew he’d been in the apartment plenty of times and his prints were all over. But he wore gloves when he shot Mrs. Ulrich. So he knew he’d left no prints on the gun or anything else that could link him to her death. And of course he was hoping that everyone would take it for granted that she had committed suicide.”

“But the match?” Koesler asked.

Zoo smiled. “He forgot what lots of killers forget: he wasn’t wearing gloves when he loaded the gun.”

Several of his listeners gasped.

“We were able to get a couple of well-formed prints on the casings that were a perfect match with Fradet.”

“So,” Father Tully said, “what I did was nice as far as a game goes, but it wasn’t so terribly important.” Again he pointed to his brother: “Good, sound police work solved the crime.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, brother,” Zoo said. “You saved Fradet’s life. And you probably saved Adams’s life in the bargain. If he had pulled that trigger, he’d probably have kissed his freedom good-bye—for life.”

“Which brings up: what about Adams?” Anne Marie asked.

“We have booked him on an assault charge,” Koznicki said. “It is a misdemeanor. He is free on his own recognizance. He may be given probation. More than likely his attorney will ask that he be taken under deferred sentencing for one year. If he is clean for that period, the case is dismissed and he will not have a record.”

“We can’t have people walking around waving loaded guns,” Zoo said. “But what Walt just explained is the next best thing to giving Adams a medal. Adams was just a hair from being charged with a felony. The prosecutor considered Adams’s clean record and the murder Fradet is charged with.”

“It’s kind of interesting,” Anne Marie mused. “It seems that Tom Adams was going to kill Jack Fradet, not because he’d had an affair with Barbara Ulrich, but because of his treachery to Adams Bank and Trust. I wonder if he had any inkling as he held that gun on Fradet that Fradet had murdered Mrs. Ulrich.”

“I don’t think Tom Adams was even thinking about her just then,” said Father Tully. “But it is ironic. We have to assume that Fradet figured that normally everybody was too wrapped up in their own affairs to pay any real attention to company scuttle butt. So there was little or no chance that his treachery would be discovered before the situation reached the actual takeover point.

“But Barbara Ulrich was something else. We know from her letter to Mr. Adams that she taxed Fradet with the alleged rumors. Presumably, he figured she was not only capable of further digging, but that she was most apt to follow up. She and she alone, seemingly, had picked up on the rumors and was starting to put two and two together.

“Fradet didn’t dare risk that. The bottom line was, Barbara Ulrich had to go … and as soon as possible. So he killed her,” Father Tully summed up in the manner of a prosecuting attorney.

“What’s going to happen to the bank?” Wanda walked around the table refilling coffee cups. “Has that horrid Fradet man ruined Adams’s bank?”

“He came close,” Father Tully said. “But all this publicity, especially about the sweetheart deals that were promised Fradet after the takeover, seems to be making the monster bank back off. That kind of notoriety they don’t need. As hard as Tom Adams has been working to bail out his bank, it’s a wonder he’s been able to take such good care of Mrs. Fradet. At the end, she was about as good a friend as Barbara Ulrich had. And Mr. Adams is grateful to her as well as sorry for her—after all, it’s not Marilyn Fradet’s fault that her husband is such a selfish traitor.”

“From all this,” Koznicki said, “it looks as if Tom Adams may have to replace every one of his executive vice presidents.”

“Well,” Father Tully said, “Fradet is gone. Of the other two, Martin Whitston is the only one with even a slim chance of survival.”

“Funny,” Zoo said to his brother, “about your theory that one or all of the execs might’ve put out a contract on Al Ulrich: Nothing came of that, even though it was plausible as theories go. But they
were
involved: each of them was having an affair with the Ulrich woman and even though they weren’t connected in any actual conspiracy, they unknowingly went along with Fradet’s plot to undermine Adams Bank.”

Father Tully pushed himself back from the table, a delighted smile playing about his lips. He turned to Father Koesler. “Is this how it is for you, Bob? You get drawn into an investigation and one thing after another falls into the religious arena until eventually it all gels in your mind … and you get emotionally high?”