Chameleon (20 page)

No laughter. A little sniggering. It was heating up for personal attacks early on. Not much longer to wait for the yelling and shouting.

Carson had scored. Hessler’s beet-red face attested to that.

Hessler was a member of no faith and had no faith. He would have been labeled an atheist or at very least, an agnostic, if he’d bothered to consider faith in any fashion whatsoever. But he did not. He merely despised all organized religion and particularly hated religious fanatics. And of these, Arnold Carson ranked at the very top of Hessler’s list.

“I wouldn’t talk about a little pecker if I was you, Carson,” Hessler said. “At least I’m married and I got three kids. Which is one wife and three kids more than you got. Carson, you gotta take your hands off your pecker sometime or you’re gonna be dead and there won’t be any little Carsons around to bore the hell out of everybody.”

Laughter, albeit strained.

“I’ve seen your kids, Hessler.…” Carson leaned forward. “Two of ’em look like the garbage collector and the third is a dead ringer for your brother. Cute little bastards.”

He had reached Hessler. Veins were bulging in the big man’s neck. “Why don’t you go screw the blessed Virgin Mary?” Hessler almost screamed across the small room, “Amateurs like you should start with a whore!”

That did it.

Carson hurled what was left of his sandwich at Hessler. It disintegrated in flight. Most of it fell to the floor. Some of it hit some of the bystanders. But the battle was joined and for the first time in their hostilities it was going to go beyond verbal abuse.

They charged at each other. Even before they met near the middle of the room, the bystanders were cheering and urging them on.

Hessler was so much bigger than Carson that this did not promise to be a long, drawn-out affair. If there had been an opportunity to wager before the battle, Hessler would have been the unanimous pick of the small fight crowd.

But there was no way to measure Carson’s inspired wrath. He was not simply drawn into a fistfight, he was off on his own private crusade.

The first blow went to Hessler. In an unconventional move, he swung both arms in an inward arc, smashing Carson on either side of the head. Hessler had used this tactic before to paralyzing effect. Ordinarily, after this somewhat premature coup de grâce, Hessler’s opponent folded, ears ringing as if a demented hunchback were swinging bells inside his head.

But bells were not ringing in Carson’s head. Rather, he heard a thundering angelic choir chanting, “God’s will! God’s will! God’s holy will! Flatten this heathen!”

Carson was all over him. It was as if Hessler were trying to fight off a swarm of angry bees, and just about as effective. In only a few seconds, Hessler had irretrievably lost the initiative and was reeling backward.

Hessler fell heavily onto the table at which just seconds before he’d been eating. The table, near splintering, collapsed under the weight of the two men, who tumbled to the floor in a heap. Instantly Carson, flailing away like a frenzied windmill, was on top, punishing Hessler mercilessly. Carson gave no quarter.

At this point the bystanders intervened, if for no other reason than to save Hessler’s life. With great difficulty they pulled Carson off. Even then, it took their combined strength to hold him back from attacking Hessler again.

For Hessler, dazed, breathless, and bloodied, the fight would have been over and done with and lost at that point but for one final strategy. As he scrambled to his feet, he drew a knife from his pocket, and flipped the blade open. The sight of the weapon and its size so startled the men that all, even Carson, involuntarily stepped back.

For Carson, the retreating step was instinctive. Instantly regaining his holy mission, Carson prepared to dive back into battle. knife or not, when a shout from the doorway froze him and everyone else in the room.

The supervisor’s attention had been drawn by the sound of the table shattering under the two combatants. Now, eye caught by the impressive knife in Hessler’s hand, he shouted several furious obscenities that stopped them all in their tracks.

“Hessler!” the supervisor roared. “Get rid of that knife! This minute!”

It was over, at least for now Hessler closed the knife, pressing the dull side of the blade against his thigh, and slid the weapon into his pocket. Later, in a more composed moment, he would recognize that the fight would not be resumed. He’d been in lots of fights before, against men of just about every size, although not many his size or better. But this jerk Carson was a madman. If the guys had not pulled Carson off, he might have bitten off one of Hessler’s ears or his nose. Carson was that crazy!

The supervisor got the two men into separate offices, told them to cool it, then called the police.

It was standard procedure. Because the post office is a federal agency, the structure a federal building, and the workers federal employees, the local police lacked jurisdiction in a matter such as this. However, the police served the essential function of getting the two combatants out of the building and away from each other. From that point on, postal inspectors would handle the case.

Due to the seriousness of his offense—wielding a deadly weapon—Hessler would appear before the sectional center, where the process of firing him would begin. Eventually, using every grievance procedure available to him, he would survive with a lengthy suspension. All would be duly noted in his work record.

As for Carson, the onlookers testified that Hessler had begun the altercation with remarks aimed at riling Carson. They further affirmed that it had been a fair fight until Hessler pulled the knife.

Carson’s file was clean. In fact, he had an exemplary record. No one could think of a single rule he had ever violated.

So Carson was issued a letter of warning and given a one-month suspension. And that was bargained down to ten days.

Actually, Carson was pleased with the outcome. For one, word quickly spread that he had taken Hessler apart. And hitherto, Hessler had had the reputation as a virtually invincible bully. Thus, Carson now became known as a force to be reckoned with. His reputation as a latter-day David who smote Goliath was enhanced.

For another, he could use the ten-day suspension productively. He needed the time to make further refinements in a plan he hoped would save the Church in Detroit and the world from itself.

Lieutenant Tully was paging through reports turned in by various members of his squad at various times. All concerned the same case, the investigation into the presumed serial killing of Helen Donovan and Lawrence Hoffer.

After notifying and getting the approval of Inspector Walter Koznicki, Tully had assigned every member of his squad to interview the people who headed departments in the archdiocese of Detroit. Each resultant report contained a plethora of information. In scanning each one, Tully concentrated on the responses to such questions as, “Can you mink of any enemies you personally have?” Or, “Are there any persons you can think of who are opposed to the work of your department?” Or, “Can you think of anyone who is opposed to the policies of the archdiocese of Detroit?”

In the responses, a pattern was forming. Almost no one named anyone who might qualify as a personal enemy. In response to the other questions, quite a few were mentioned. Tully was jotting down names that kept recurring throughout the reports. There were quite a few.

His talk with Father Koesler had helped. Tully felt slightly more confident wandering through the hitherto totally unfamiliar territory of Church administration. Not completely at home by any means. But not in a totally foreign field either.

Seated across the desk was Sergeant Angie Moore. She had been the latest and last of his squad to turn in a report. Tully studied the result of her investigation, frequently cross-checking it with the other reports.

“Zoo, be honest,” Moore said. “I drew the meanest bastard in the lot, didn’t I?”

Tully smiled. “Seems like it. But how would we know beforehand? It wasn’t on purpose.”

“But he was, wasn’t he, Zoo? I mean the meanest?”

Tully maintained his relaxed and engaging grin. “Judging by the other reports, I’d have to say he ranks. No; give the devil his due: You got the meanest.”

“I thought people in public relations were supposed to be pleasant, nice.”

“So did I. But mere’s always the exception—”

“Well, he proved the rule okay,” Moore interrupted, “It’ll be a long time before I forget Father Cletus Bash.”

“I see he’s the only one interviewed who admits to having a personal enemy or two.”

“Is he the only one?” Moore had no access to the other reports; this was the first she knew that none of the others had acknowledged any enemies. “I guess I’d put him down as paranoid, except that after spending an hour with him I expect his enemies are probably not imaginary. They could be for real.”

Tully studied silently for a few moments. “It says here,” he referred to her report, “that among his own enemies and those he listed as opposed both to the Church and the Church in Detroit are guys named Stapleton and Carson. Those are two names that are pretty familiar. They show up repeatedly on the other reports.”

“Do they? That’s interesting. That’s why I looked into their background a little bit, because Bash mentioned them three times. No one else got that kind of billing.”

“You did? Good. What did you find?”

“A lot on Carson. Not all that much on Stapleton.

“I went over to the
Free Press
library and went through their records—through the automated, the semi-automated, and even back through the envelope files,” Moore continued. “Carson goes back to the early sixties. Whatever he did before that couldn’t have been very newsworthy; They didn’t have any prior clippings on them.”

The early sixties
, thought Tully. What was it? Something Koesler had been talking about. Yeah, that council that changed everything. Tully concluded that whatever it was Carson had done to make the news probably had been a reaction—his reaction—to that council. “Wasn’t that the Vatican Council in the early sixties?”

Moore was surprised. “Gee, Zoo, I didn’t think you paid any attention to religion. But, yeah, that was when the council was going on—early sixties.”

“Go on.” Tully was all business.

“Okay.” Moore rummaged through her tote bag. “I got some readouts and made some notes. Here we go. The early reports on Carson aren’t all that inflammatory. I think they were included in his file based on hindsight I think that after he got to be a newsmaker, they went back to find some sort of things, no matter how innocuous, that he was involved in earlier. But it notes that he was among the earliest members of a group called Catholics United for the Faith. It seems to be a pretty popular movement. Most people know it by its initials, CUF. Then he went on to a more extreme group called the Tridentines. That’s when he begins to get some individual attention in the media.”

Tully remembered Koesler’s explanation of the right-wing reaction to the council. Without that briefing, this would not have made a lot of sense.

Moore looked up from her notes inquiringly as if asking whether she need go into detail about these groups. Tully caught the subtle query. “Go ahead.”

Moore shrugged. If he thought he understood all this, it was all right with her. But she was at a loss to know how he did it.

She resumed. “It was just a little while after he joined the Tridentines that he became the group’s leader.”

Moore, a lifelong Catholic, well remembered the aftereffects of the council and the turmoil that had ensued, particularly in this archdiocese. Cardinal—then Archbishop—Boyle was elected the first president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. He had been extremely active and influential in that Vatican Council. And he saw to it that the changes and developments ordered by the council were implemented in his archdiocese.

That was by no means the reaction of other bishops and archbishops. One of those changes involved encouraging the laity to get more deeply involved in everything from parish life to policymaking on an archdiocesan level. People reflecting the spirit as well as the letter of the council took this bit and ran with it.

Meanwhile, CUF, not to mention the far more militant Tridentines, were generally opposed to the letter of the council. The less easily defined “spirit” of the council was, in the eyes of the right wing, an abomination.

Thus, in those early days there were many public meetings and gatherings sponsored by and starring, for want of a better designation, Church liberals. At most of these meetings, the right wing was conspicuously present, frequently and vociferously led by Arnold Carson.

Without the presence of Carson, along with his faithful few followers, these meetings would have been peaceable and calm on the whole. With Carson and crew present, they frequenyly degenerated into angry confrontations and occasionally even some measure of violence and reaction.

Moore attempted to explain all this briefly to Tully. He accepted her explanation, knowledgeable about part but by no means all of the history.

“See,” Moore continued, “once Carson got to be the leader of the Tridentines, he was bound to make news. From the very nature of the organization and the fact that it existed just when it did—when all the changes were taking place. So”—she glanced again through the notes and readouts—”there were some arrests, lots of charges of ‘police brutality,’ and plenty of media coverage for Arnold Carson.

“In the seventies”—Moore continued to finger through her notes—”diere was a Catholic ‘Call to Action’ meeting. It was a national meeting hosted by Detroit. Sort of a put-into-practice-what-we-learned-from-the-council. Carson and some of his friends showed up, carrying a banner hailing Boyle as the ‘red’ Cardinal—in effect calling him a commie. Which in Tridentine terms is about the bottom of the barrel.

“Then there’s a note about the time he pushed a priest down the steps of a church—”

“Wait,” Tully cut in, “some violence? An arrest?”

“The priest didn’t press charges. But here’s the funny thing: The priest was Father Fred Stapleton!”