The Only Good Priest (16 page)
Read The Only Good Priest Online
Authors: Mark Richard Zubro
It was Mildred Weber from St. Joseph's rectory. “We have to see you boys.” She wouldn't tell me what for on the phone, but we could come to their home right after dark.
Feeling only slightly ridiculous, but on the off chance they really knew something, we drove to the suburbs. Across the street from the Webers' the rectory blazed with light. We found their house completely dark. Climbing the stairs I felt uneasy. I
had my hand raised to knock when the door jerked open. A hand reached out and yanked me in. “Hurry,” an elderly voice whispered. Scott jumped in behind me.
had my hand raised to knock when the door jerked open. A hand reached out and yanked me in. “Hurry,” an elderly voice whispered. Scott jumped in behind me.
Mildred put her finger to her lips. The dimness made close observation difficult, but I could see overstuffed furniture covered with lace doilies cluttering the room.
She dragged us to the front picture window and knelt on the floor next to Harriet. Mildred motioned for us to join them. Down we crouched. Between the closed drapes and the window pane was a two-inch gap.
“We always watch from here,” Mildred whispered.
I looked and saw the lit rectory. I detected no human movement.
“What's going on?” Scott asked.
Mildred explained without taking her eyes off the rectory. She said, “It's been going on all afternoon. First that awful Bishop Smith showed up.”
“Father Sebastian introduced us once,” Harriet said. “I didn't trust him from the first minute, did I?”
They did their nod routine.
Smith had stayed an hour. Constance quit in a screaming fit around four. Smith left soon after. Clarence snarled at Mildred and Harriet. They left, directionless and at a loss, without even preparing supper, something they'd always done. Since then a woman had driven up. From the description I guessed her to be Clarence's wife. In the middle of her visit a small moving truck had driven up. They spent a half hour moving Father Clarence's things out of the house. They'd driven off twenty minutes before we drove up.
Fascinating as all this might have been, I didn't care about Father Clarence unless he was part of the kidnapping solution. He'd lied to us, but even if Smith told us lies too, I'd begun to suspect Clarence was an innocent man caught in a web far beyond his own comprehension. He had enough problems of his own.
After watching five more minutes of no movement, I said, “Why did you call us?”
They eased their creaking bones off the floor and drew us deeper into the house. A swinging door led from a dining room into the kitchen. Before turning on the lights, they pulled all the shades and shut the drapes.
Once my eyes adjusted to the light I gazed on a room that looked exactly like a maiden aunt's kitchen should, from the metal canisters with ingredient labels on the outside to the embroidered
God bless our home
framed plaque. A filled glass cookie jar sat on a corner of the counter next to the refrigerator. The room smelled of fresh bread and musty old wood mixed with spices on the tip of recognition.
God bless our home
framed plaque. A filled glass cookie jar sat on a corner of the counter next to the refrigerator. The room smelled of fresh bread and musty old wood mixed with spices on the tip of recognition.
They seated us. A plate of cookies, fresh bread, and corn muffins appeared, along with tall glasses of milk. At first we tried saying no thanks. It was like trying to refuse your grandmother. We ate and sipped and waited. When we were sufficiently fed, they brought out their revelation.
Harriet got out a stepstool from the pantry, climbed it, and pulled a stack of mail from the top shelf of the cupboard over the sink.
“This is Father Sebastian's mail,” she said.
I raised an eyebrow.
“We didn't steal it,” Harriet said.
“We've been in charge of sorting mail at the rectory for twenty years,” Mildred added. “Constance and Father Clarence tried to take the job away from us, but Father Sebastian came to our rescue.”
They hadn't known what to do with the dead priest's mail. No one seemed to care when they asked, so they'd kept it and brought it home every night.
“It was my idea to show it to you,” Harriet said. “Like those detectives on TV. You're so young and handsome, and you were so polite last time. We wanted to help you. We thought this might be a clue.”
There must have been thirty envelopes, all open. I asked about this.
“Father Sebastian trusted us. We'd open each piece of mail, examine it, and decide on its importance. We placed it in separate piles on his desk every afternoon. We'd been doing it for ten years. It saved him time.”
“Plus you thought you might try a little detective work yourselves,” Scott suggested.
They nodded. “But it didn't do us any good. We couldn't find anything important,” Harriet said. “Then we thought of you. And you were such nice boys. We wanted to see you again.” She smiled shyly. “We forgot to get Mr. Carpenter's autograph.”
I felt odd looking through a dead man's mail. It seemed illegal, or at least indecent. This gave me pause for a second. If anything here gave us a clue to finding Jerry, I wasn't concerned about esoteric legal points.
The four of us sat around the Formica-top table on plastic-covered chairs. The women watched as Scott and I divided the stacks. I started with very little hope. They'd seen too many TV shows. My stack had a few bills, a lot of junk mail, and a personal letter from a former parishioner now living in California. I examined everything carefully. The letter was innocuous and pleasant enough from someone unaware of tragedy. The bills showed no pattern. A few meals on his VISA charge at suburban restaurants didn't reveal anything. The MasterCard bill showed some purchases at a men's clothing store in the past month. It could have been socks and underwear. No singular fact leap out to reveal a hidden life.
Scott sat leafing through a small stack of canceled checks. He had the other mail sitting to his left. He slowly began separating the checks into two stacks.
“Find something?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
The two women and I leaned closer. Scott pushed one stack to his left. “Those are ordinary checks.” Then he held out four
checks in a fan. “These are all made out to Dr. Hiram Kramer, all for seventy-five dollars, each a week apart.”
checks in a fan. “These are all made out to Dr. Hiram Kramer, all for seventy-five dollars, each a week apart.”
Harriet and Mildred didn't have a clue as to who Hiram was. I had a guess. Maybe a medical doctor, but probably some kind of therapist. We checked the local phone book but found no listing. We tried directory assistance. Hiram had an office in the Loop and lived in Rogers Park on Sheridan Road. We decided against a call and voted for a visit.
We thanked Harriet and Mildred. It was a slender thread, but better than anything else we had to go on.
Scott hurried out to his Porche and came back with enough baseballs for all their nephews and nieces. He gets so many requests for signed baseballs, he started carrying a supply in the car. They beamed at us. They wanted to give us supper, but we managed to beg off.
We drove to the city up I-57 to the Dan Ryan Expressway. Took the Stevenson to Lake Shore Drive and up to where it ends at Hollywood and turned right onto Sheridan. I hit a huge pothole at full speed.
“Easy,” Scott said. “We're not even sure he'll be there, or if he'll tell us anything. We probably should have called ahead.”
I slowed down, but not much. Hiram Kramer lived in the last high rise before Sheridan Road turns to go around Mundelein College and Loyola University.
He was home. When the security guard mentioned Father Sebastian's name into the phone, the person on the other end gave him permission to let us in. I knew immediately as soon as he opened the door that this was the mysterious stranger who met Sebastian on Sunday nights at Roscoe's: short, slight, with dark hair and a pipe.
He showed us into a living room furnished in books. Eight-foot-high bookcases filled every available wall. A rolltop desk placed in front of one of the floor-to-ceiling windows gaped open. Kramer sat on a swivel chair in front of the desk. He seated us in two canvas-backed captain's chairs, the only other seats in the room except for a long black leather couch.
After our introduction he acknowledged Scott with congratulations on his ninth twenty-game season last year.
Then Kramer settled himself into his chair, leaned back, and placed his stocking-clad feet on an open desk drawer. I explained why we'd come, where we found out about him, and how we needed his help.
He fiddled with his pipe, tamped down the tobacco, then used a lighter. The resulting flame reached at least nine inches on each puff. He grinned in satisfaction and faced us. He needed a beard on his face for the right cliché effect. Instead he showed us yellowed teeth and said, “Even though he's dead, I'm not at liberty to talk about him.”
“Someone killed him,” I said.
He took the pipe by the bowl and stared at us. “There's been no mention of that in the papers. Why hasn't anyone heard? I can't believe it. His death was shock enough. He was the only good priest I ever knew.”
I spoke as persuasively as I knew how, trying to get him to open up. He wouldn't budge. He talked about professional ethics.
“At least tell us about your relationship with Father Sebastian. It had to be more than professional,” I said.
He puffed on his pipe thoughtfully for a minute, then said, “I can go into that a little bit. We met in seminary.” Both just out of high school, the two of them had discovered a shared interest in medieval chant. Their mutual sexual orientation had led to little more than a bout or two of mechanical fumbling. “We never even got all our clothes off. We decided our friendship was more important than sex. Besides, in those days it was necessary to be exceptionally discreet.”
I asked about a liaison with John Smith. I got a surprised look. “How'd you find out about that?”
I told him we'd had a talk with Smith.
He fumbled with his pipe, knocked out the ashes, rearranged some papers on his desk, and finally picked up a pen and
tapped one end against the desk. With a conscious effort he stopped fidgeting and gave me a direct look.
tapped one end against the desk. With a conscious effort he stopped fidgeting and gave me a direct look.
“Even if it was murder, what would a thirty-year-old relationship have to do with it?”
“We were hoping you could tell us.”
He frowned. “I guess I can tell the story, but it reflects more on me than on Sebastian or Smith.” He took a deep breath and began to talk.
Thirty years ago he and Sebastian had been as inseparable as the restrictive rules at the time permitted. Then Smith had entered the picture. For a while the three palled around together. After a while he realized the other two had begun to leave him out of their activities. He'd confronted Sebastian. They'd argued.
He got a soft look in his eyes. They glistened with moisture. “My jealousy consumed me. He offered friendship. I wanted him exclusively. He was so damn kind and understanding. I left the seminary rather than see the two of them together.”
Hiram told us he'd done a lot of growing up, got some therapy, and joined a program to become a psychotherapist. During that time Sebastian looked him up. They'd kept in contact. Then two years ago Sebastian had come to him to ask formally to be in therapy. He'd insisted on paying like any other client.
“Were Smith and Sebastian lovers?”
“You mean did they have genital contact?” His eyes flashed angrily. “I have no idea. I didn't want to know then or now. If you mean, were they in love? In a schoolboy-crush way, I suppose you could say yes.” His tone and manner, though, said yes, he did care. I thought to myself, some hurts never go away.
Kramer insisted that, while they were still friends, their relationship for the past two years was definitely client and therapist.
“Did he tell you he tested positive for the AIDS antibodies?” I asked.
“That's something I'm not at liberty to discuss.”
I sighed. It was impossible to find out anything they'd discussed in therapy. I asked, “Why meet at Roscoe's?”
“Why not? It was convenient. I drove down. It made less of a trek home for him.”
“You won't tell us anything?” I asked.
He relit his pipe, then gazed at us over the smoking bowl. “You gentlemen ask for a great deal. I understand your emotional involvement because of your nephew. You aren't the police. I told you all there is about Sebastian and me, but you're a couple of amateurs who can be of little benefit to my former client. It is his interest I need to protect even though he's dead.” Puffs of smoke escaped languidly from behind the hand that engulfed the bowl of the pipe. A minute later he put the pipe down and said, “You're obviously used to people being charmed by Mr. Carpenter's fame or perhaps the people you request information from are swept away by the force of your obvious emotion. I'm not. Come back with a court order or put me on the stand. Then I might talk.”
Minutes later we gave it up as futile. At Scott's place I called Neil. I told him I wanted the remaining members of the Faith Board of Directors in the penthouse within the hour. He began a few protests, but I issued orders, and for once the old queen shut up and did as he was told.
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