Ash Wednesday (19 page)

In his study, lighting his pipe, he acknowledged that Jason’s suddenly altered financial condition might indeed have magnetic properties for his estranged wife. He had been told that she was a financial counselor.

In the funeral Mass the next day, Father Dowling followed the
Novus Ordo
, but in Latin, and the vestments were white. Thus neither Kevin nor Monica was completely pleased or displeased. At Jason’s insistence, Nathaniel Green sat with the family in the front pew, between Madeline and Carmela. Natalie Armstrong was there as well. Eugene Schmidt was nowhere to be seen.

“You don’t like funerals?” Herman asked Schmidt.

“I’ll go to my own.”

That was all on that subject, thank God. Herman had heard how Schmidt was going around blaming himself for what happened, expecting any moment to be taken into custody. When he tapped on the door and looked in on Herman after all the others had gone off to the church for the funeral Mass, Herman feared that he was going to be a one-man audience for Schmidt’s crocodile tears. To his relief, Schmidt seemed his usual cocky self.

“You got anything to drink?”

It was ten in the morning. Herman was an over-the-yardarm man, putting off drinking so he could get a mild buzz on while he watched television and then fall quickly asleep when he went to bed. Or sometimes before he got to bed.

“A bottle of water?”

“Ha.”

“All I’ve got is beer.”

“I want a real drink.”

“Well, you’ll have to go for it.”

“Where’s the nearest place?”

Schmidt was serious. Herman told him of the liquor store two
blocks away. Schmidt was on his feet. “I’ll be back before you can say Jack Robinson.”

When he was gone, Herman sat there wondering who the hell Jack Robinson was. Oh, he knew the expression, but how had it got started? He considered asking Schmidt when he came back, but he knew the answer—of course there would be an answer, sharp and quick—would have to be checked. Not that Herman really gave a damn about Jack Robinson, whoever he was.

Eugene returned with a bottle of scotch. Herman told him there was ice in the fridge. Eugene looked shocked.

“Neat, Herman. It’s the only way to savor it. Of course, if you want ice in yours …”

Herman didn’t want a drink, but he thought he might have a light one, with water and lots of ice, just to be good company even if he was the host.

Eugene lifted his glass with the ounce or so of scotch in it, let it slide toward his mouth, and then took a little on his tongue. “Ah,” he said, resting the glass on the arm of his chair. “Always sip scotch.” Herman’s drink didn’t taste weak enough, but he wasn’t the sipping sort. Anyway, he was going to hold himself to the one drink.

“Life is like a billiard game, Herman. You hit one ball, it hits another, that hits a third, and then on and on.”

“Where do you play billiards?”

“Okay. Have the third ball hit the first, which hits the second, on and on.”

Herman nodded. If they were going to talk billiards, he wanted accuracy.

Schmidt wasn’t interested in billiards, the game, he said, but the way one thing happened and then another and another, but if the first hadn’t happened none of the rest would have. Herman nodded. He’d had a cellmate who talked like that.

“I run Helen Burke into the abutment—that was an accident, a pure accident, Herman, just ask Father Dowling—and look what follows. I’ve made all kinds of people rich.”

Schmidt seemed to have acquired a lot of knowledge about Helen Burke and Nathaniel Green and all their shirttail relatives.

“Not only does Jason get what his mother had, he’s in line for what Nathaniel will leave her.”

“Nathaniel will change his mind now.”

“Don’t say that.” Schmidt had been speaking as if he had endowed Jason; now he was alarmed.

“Why leave a pile to a dead woman?” Herman asked.

“He wants to get rid of it. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve talked to him. He sits out on his bench like a monk and says he thinks Helen was right, what would he have if he hadn’t married Florence?”

“What did he do?”

“For a living? Not much, I guess. He never mentioned it. Anyway, he thinks of what he has as ill-gotten gains. The solution? Turn it over to his sister-in-law.”

“Who’s dead.”

“She’s got an heir. Jason.”

“What a loser,” Herman said, as if his own life had been an uninterrupted series of triumphs.

“Some loser. He’s rolling in it. Why do you think his wife came back to him?”

“Did she?”

“She was hanging on his arm at the wake as if she were afraid he’d get away.”

“You take credit for that too?”

“Billiards, Herman. Billiards.”

Schmidt’s glass was empty. Full of his subject, he had forgotten to sip and get the savor of the scotch. He replenished his glass and
looked inquiringly at Herman. What the hell, why not? Herman extended his glass. He would settle for the ice still in it.

Schmidt wasn’t through. “There’ll be others, too. Other relatives. What a family. They’re related to one another in ways even they can’t explain. Nathaniel told me there are other provisions in his will, but most of it goes to Helen.”

“Who’s dead.”

“Damn it, I explained that.”

“So who are the others?”

“Madeline Clancy, for one.”

“No kidding.”

“She’s some kind of cousin to Jason. Nathaniel knows that. I’m sure she’s in the will.”

“Lucky her.”

“And Natalie. Natalie Armstrong.”

“Your girlfriend?”

Schmidt smiled smugly. Well, he was a ladies’ man, no doubt of that. Even if Herman believed only a fraction of the conquests Schmidt had ticked off, he’d had a pretty interesting career.

“Why didn’t you marry them?”

“Some of them I did.”

“Come on.”

“Twice. They didn’t last, of course. I’m a rolling stone.”

“How come you rolled in here?”

“I might ask you the same.”

Herman explained the path he himself had taken to this snug little apartment in the basement of the school. The chaplain at the place, Barney O’Connell, had told him of the way Father Dowling helped graduates of Joliet get settled.

“My parole officer convinced me to accept. I’m glad I did.”

“Who could blame you?” Schmidt said, looking approvingly
around at Herman’s habitation. He toasted the place, then tossed off his drink. He seemed to have forgotten his theory about sipping scotch.

They both had another. And another.

“An Irish wake,” Schmidt said.

“You Irish?”

“Helen Burke is.”

“I’m Polish.”

“Herman the German?”

“It’s a long story.”

Schmidt wasn’t interested. He sat there, wearing his smug smile, obviously very pleased with himself. Well, he considered himself a benefactor to all Nathaniel Green’s and Helen Burke’s relatives, shirttail or not.

“You forgot one thing, Schmidt.”

“What’s that?”

“You left yourself out. So all those others got lucky, what’s it to you?”

Schmidt seemed about to say something, but he didn’t. He just went on raising his glass to that smug smile.

When Father Dowling told Marie that he was having lunch with Amos Cadbury at the University Club after the noon Mass, she couldn’t understand why they couldn’t eat in the rectory. He told her it was Amos’s suggestion that they eat in Chicago, and then
wished he hadn’t. Marie expected and received unstinting praise from Amos whenever she fed him at the pastor’s table. She clearly thought Amos’s decision to take Father Dowling elsewhere for lunch was an implicit criticism of her culinary skills. Father Dowling couldn’t think of anything to say that would not make her feel worse. In the end, it was Amos who mollified Marie and left her purring

“In Lent, it seemed only fitting to deprive myself of your marvelous skills, Mrs. Murkin.”

“A Lenten meal,” she said dismissively, trying not to smile.

“That’s just it. A Lenten meal prepared by you would be a feast anywhere else. No, Father Dowling and I will do penance at the University Club.”

As they were driven away in Amos’s elongated car, Father Dowling asked the lawyer if he had ever considered diplomacy. Amos professed not to understand the question. Roger Dowling let it go.

On the drive, they talked of Helen Burke’s funeral. “Sometimes I feel like a doctor, Father. Always burying clients.”

“You were Helen’s lawyer for a long time?”

“And her father’s before her. Helen was like her father, Florence favored her mother.”

“And now you will have to sort out her estate?”

Amos laid a hand on Father Dowling’s arm. “After we’ve eaten.”

Amos had reserved his favorite table, next to a window and away from the conversation and sounds of cutlery and china in the center of the room. Crab casserole and white wine for Amos and fantail shrimp for Father Dowling, no wine. During the meal, Father Dowling entertained Amos with stories of Herman, the current parish janitor.

“You’re rehabilitating him, Father?”

“Only if leaving him alone has that effect.”

“He’s still on parole, I imagine.”

“Paxon.”

Amos’s eyes rolled upward. “When do virtues turn into vices, Father?”

“When they abandon the golden mean.”

Amos was delighted.
“In medio stat virtus
. Isn’t that the phrase?”

“Aristotle.”

“Have I ever told you about the ethics class I had from John Oesterle?”

Amos was a double domer, as he put it, holding both an undergraduate and law degree from Notre Dame. His loyalty to his old school had been put to severe tests in recent years, and he sought refuge in memories of a better if distant past. The ethics course he had taken from Professor Oesterle was one of his most consoling memories. “You should have heard him on double effect, Father.”

“I’ve been hearing a version of it from Eugene Schmidt.”

After finishing their meal, they stood and went into the club library, where they could have the talk that was the reason Amos had invited Father Dowling.

“Tell me about Eugene Schmidt, Father.”

Father Dowling was surprised, and it must have shown. Or was Amos merely continuing from his guest’s last remark at table?

“Natalie Armstrong seems quite taken with him,” Amos said after he had his cigar going satisfactorily. Father Dowling was filling his pipe. “She sent him to the rectory for instructions, Amos.”

“Did she?”

“I don’t think he’s serious.”

“I am afraid she is. What I am going to say may sound like a strange extension of the obligations I owe that family, professionally but also personally. Anything you can tell me about the man, I would appreciate learning.”

Father Dowling felt suddenly inadequate. When Schmidt came to
the rectory with his doubts about the Trinity, he had seemed a familiar type. Someone who enjoys chattering about religion as long as he can keep it at a safe remove. Marie, of course, was curious about the dapper little man who seemed to be the darling of the senior center, but Father Dowling had not quizzed Schmidt about his past.

“Has he been coming to the center long, Father?”

“A month or two.”

“Just showed up?”

“Amos, I have to confess I really know nothing about him.”

The patrician lawyer nodded. “No reason why you should probe into everyone who comes to the center, of course.” It sounded like a criticism. “Let me tell you what I propose to do.”

What Amos proposed doing was hiring a private investigator to find out all he could about Eugene Schmidt.

“Is it really that important?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Because of Natalie Armstrong’s interest in Schmidt, and vice versa.

“It will all be done with a maximum of discretion, of course. I have no idea what Maxwell will learn and what I might or might not do with what he tells me.”

“Maxwell.”

“The firm has used him in the past. An utterly trustworthy fellow, despite the unsavory nature of his craft.”

“You might just ask Cy Horvath to look into it.”

“I’d rather not. He would be bound to think that I have grounded suspicions about Schmidt.”

Thus it was that Father Dowling seemed to have given his blessing to hiring Maxwell to check up on the past of Eugene Schmidt. That done, Amos turned to financial matters. Here the great worry was what Jason Burke might do with his soon-to-be-acquired wealth.