Stained Glass (7 page)

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Authors: Ralph McInerny

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BOOK: Stained Glass
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Menteur summoned Tetzel from the pressroom in the courthouse to give him the assignment.
“That's religious news,” he protested. “Give it to the religion editor.”
“Then you haven't heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Bipple insists that the charges are false. He says it is retaliation.”
“What charges?”
Bipple in the past had been an assistant Scout leader, and now many years later some of his troop, since grown old, were remembering odd activities around the campfire and in the tents. No journalist had been more zealous than Bipple in publicizing the misdeeds of some of the Catholic clergy. His series in the
Fox River Tribune
had been called “Suffer Little Children” and had been reprinted far and wide. Bipple had always been a pain in the ass, but he became insufferable with fame. Tetzel settled in a chair across the desk from Menteur and wanted to hear all about it. He shook his head and tried not to smile.
“I never put much stock in the rumors myself,” Tetzel said with a virtuous look.
“About the Boy Scouts?”
“Menteur, I never made it to Tenderfoot. I couldn't tie the knots. No, I meant here.” He lifted his brows significantly.
“Here!”
Tetzel cleared his throat. “The men's room. Should I write it up?”
“Over my dead body.”
“I'll keep your name out of it.”
Despite himself, Menteur laughed. “I almost hope the charges are true. We could use a new religion editor.”
“Don't look at me.”
“I'm thinking of you for obituaries.”
This was the most congenial conversation Tetzel had had with Menteur in months. He was almost cheerful about being assigned to look into the closing of St. Hilary's. “What's going on?”
Menteur chewed his gum and glared at Tetzel. “If I already knew, why would I send you? Rebecca's story on the seniors drew a lot of letters.”
Going down in the elevator, Tetzel was thankful that Menteur, sitting there in his smoke-free office, had gotten over his obsession with the fact that they could still light up in the courthouse pressroom. Or was that the motive behind this freak assignment? Was it a subtle revenge? Then Tetzel thought of Bipple and chuckled, somewhat to the alarm of his fellow passengers in the elevator. Before exiting, he took a cigarette from his pack and put it unlit in his mouth. If chuckling got attention, the sight of a man with a cigarette in his mouth filled observers with shock and horror, some perhaps with envy. Tetzel strolled through the revolving doors and outside to freedom. He lit up.
The funny thing about the assignment was that every time Tetzel had heard St. Hilary's mentioned it was as a booming operation. He might ask Rebecca about it, but he feared she would laugh at the
thought of Tetzel being assigned to religious news. Besides, she was trying to find a way to write about what had shocked her when she had been traveling in Europe. Female attendants in men's rooms! Sitting there at little tables just inside, dispensing towels, a dish for tips before them.
“How'd you find out about it?” Tetzel asked.
She glared at him. “It is common knowledge.”
“Maybe they have boys in the ladies' rooms.”
Rebecca turned away in disgust and fumbled in her drawer, perhaps to find her Tetzel doll so she could stick a few pins in it. She huddled over, using her back as a shield against Tetzel, then after some moments settled back, kicking the drawer shut. She lifted a glass and tossed it off. Say what you would about Rebecca, at least she smoked and drank. Nonetheless, Tetzel decided that Tuttle would be a better source about St. Hilary's.
Tuttle's office was located midway between the
Tribune
building and the courthouse, so Tetzel thought he would just drop in.
Dropping in did not seem the appropriate way to describe the long climb up four flights of stairs. The temporarily out of use elevator hadn't moved in years. Only on the third landing did it occur to him that the prudent course would have been to call first. He took out his cell phone and glared at it, then dropped it back into his shirt pocket. There was only one floor to go, and he would continue to gamble.
The legend on the door read TUTTLE & TUTTLE, a touching tribute to the late Tuttle père, who had been a mail carrier. Tetzel tapped and pushed. The door opened to reveal in profile the formidable woman at her computer.
“Yes?” she said and only then turned. Her nose wrinkled.
“Tetzel of the
Tribune.
I'll start with you, if you don't mind.”
“Start with me?” The frostiness fled and she put a hand to her hair. “What do you mean?”
Tetzel pulled a chair up to her desk and got out his notebook. “How do you spell your name?”
For a few minutes Hazel was putty in his hands. He could have asked whether she dyed her hair and gotten an answer. A door behind him opened.
“Tetzel, what are you doing here?”
“I'm going to do a series on the secretaries of our most successful men.”
“Don't tell him a thing, Hazel. He gives new meaning to the phrase ‘the freedom of the press.'”
“He said it was …” She was so furious she threw her mouse at Tetzel. He retreated into the inner office, followed by Tuttle.
“Thanks a lot, Tetzel. She's been almost human for days.”
“Maybe we ought to get out of here.”
“I was about to suggest the same thing.”
 
 
Settled in a booth in the Jury Room, Tetzel got the story from Tuttle, who spoiled things a bit by adding it was all in the
Tribune
. Had Bipple been on this before his fall?
“The
Chicago Tribune
.”
Tetzel scowled. What he thought of the
Chicago Tribune
was not fit to print, but then anyone there who had heard of him might have reciprocated the sentiment.
“How do you shut down a church, Tuttle?”
“It's not going to happen. I have it on impeccable authority.”
“Father Dowling?”
“No. Willie, the maintenance man. If you want the real scoop, go to the man who pushes a broom.”
“I think Hazel must fly on one.”
“Only in the full moon, Tetzel. Only in the full moon.”
Father Dowling told Marie of his exchange with Bishop Wilenski, and the housekeeper let out a whoop of triumph. “People say that prayers aren't answered.”
“Don't make too much of it, Marie. If anything saves us it will be the stained glass windows.”
Marie plunked into a chair. “The stained glass windows.” After a moment's silence, she began to nod. “Of course you're right. Our Lady is our refuge.”
He let it go. He spent a day searching for any records of the building of the church, but the files were still such a mess that that didn't prove anything at all. He told Amos Cadbury this when they met at the University Club that night.
“Your best source on that would be Jane Devere.”
They were having a preprandial drink in the library. At least Amos was, unless tomato juice counts as a drink in such a context. The venerable lawyer tasted his scotch and water with the concentration of a connoisseur.
“Tell me about the Deveres, Amos.”
Amos affected surprise. “They're your parishioners.”
“And your clients.”
“Meaning that each of us might be restricted in what he would say.”
“I meant just a sense of the family, the generations. Even Marie is vague on the matter.”
Amos put his drink on the table beside him and settled in his chair. “August Devere,” he began.
If August were considered the first generation, there were four generations to be taken into account. Jane, wife of William, the late son of the late August, would be the sole representative of the second, but she had three children, with the oldest of whom, James, and his sister, she shared the house that August had built and in which she had lived most of her long life. Then there was the latest generation.
“Hugh?”
“And Susan,” Amos said after a pause.
“Their father, James, has two siblings?”
“He had two. Only one, a sister, is still alive. His younger brother was a naval officer, a pilot, who was reported missing in action in the Middle East. His sister, Margaret, is Mrs. Bernard Ward.”
“Mrs. Bernard Ward.”
“Yes.”
Margaret Ward was what is now called a paleo-conservative, a staunch and vocal critic of the so-called neocons, her wit legendary, her aristocratic dismissal of dubious converts to the conservative cause enjoyed even by its victims for the unforgettable English in which it was expressed. “A liberal, like lilies that fester, is odious under any name.” Her half-dozen books all continued to sell in respectable numbers; the latest,
Narcissus in Niger
, was still among the top ten on the bestseller lists, almost a year after its publication. She was a formidable foe, a loyal ally, and a ferocious Catholic to boot.
“What is a ferocious Catholic, Amos?”
“Margaret would say that she has modeled herself on Chesterton and Belloc. Others find her more akin to Patrick Buchanan.”
“I don't know him.”
“Never say that to Margaret.”
“I doubt that I will have the opportunity.”
“She speaks very highly of you.”
“I scarcely know the woman.”
“As I said before, the Deveres, some of them, are your parishioners.”
“Yes. Margaret is one of them.” One he seldom saw. Her work involved incessant travel.
Over their meal, Father Dowling briefed Amos on his conversation with Bishop Wilenski. The lawyer nodded through the narrative as if arriving at a judgment. “The Deveres are your armor and shield, Father Dowling.”
“I got the impression that it was the Menotti windows in the church.”
“That is very much the same thing.”
Later, in a lounge, with Amos sipping brandy, Father Dowling got the lawyer's account of the commissioning of the stained glass windows by August Devere. “It was Jane who made him aware of the work of Angelo Menotti. The artist was not well known then. Jane had made his acquaintance as a student at Rosary College.”
“Surely he wasn't a fellow student.”
Amos smiled. Of course, Rosary had been exclusively a women's college.
“He was artist in residence there. It would not be too much to say that Jane launched his career in stained glass windows.”
“He did other things as well?”
“Oh, yes. Paintings, some sculpture. Stained glass was important to his career, but not everything. He did a portrait of my wife.”
“The bishop told me that someone intends to reproduce all of Menotti's stained glass in a book.”
“Yes. Carl Borloff. I drew up the agreement between him and Jane Devere. Of course, he will also need permission from you and the other pastors in whose churches Menotti windows are found. It is one of the ironies of such things that the artist's permission is not required.”
“Is he alive?”
“Indeed he is. In his presence I feel like a young man again, not that I could compete with him in agility. He is older than Jane by a year or two.”
“Then you see him?”
Amos drew on his cigar, and his words seemed to ride exhaled smoke as if he were a Plains Indian sending signals. “He is a client of mine.”
“For someone in alleged semiretirement, you seem to have a host of clients.”
“But of an age, Father. Of an age. By and large, that is.”
“I know Hugh, of course. He came by before setting off for South Bend. He wanted me to bless his car. One doesn't get many such requests nowadays.”
“He is a good boy. A credit to his family and his school, and a scratch golfer. If he were less serious, he might earn a fortune playing golf.”
“Did you ever tell him that?”
“He hardly needs anyone to tell him, but, yes, I did. His reply was ‘But where are the pars of yesteryear?'” Amos smiled at the memory. It was clear that he thought the world of Hugh Devere. “He will make an excellent architect. His mentors at Notre Dame, Stroik and Smith, are designing buildings across the country. Their speciality is church architecture.”
“Hugh has a sister.”
“Yes.”
Father Dowling waited. Finally he said, “You seemed hesitant to mention Susan.”
The smile faded. “That is a matter into which I cannot presently go, Father Dowling.”

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