Last Things (26 page)

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Authors: Ralph McInerny

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BOOK: Last Things

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“Oh stop it!”

“I'm serious. A colleague who hated him was killed, and Andrew has been accused of doing it.”

“Raymond, you poor thing. You have to get away from all that. Come home now.”

“It will take some days to get my mother's things in order. The loneliness is beginning to sink in, the fact that she is all alone now â¦”

“I know the feeling.”

“Phyllis, cheer me up. Tell me what you've been doing.”

A prolonged sigh. “I have spent more time with Julia than I should have. Now she has a crush on me.”

“Be careful.”

“She is cute.”

“So are you.”

“That's what she tells me.”

How Californian it all sounded. Life lived on the frothy surface: movement, diversion, fun, sex. The ribbons of highway seemed to symbolize a state whose population was always in transit, hurtling along, paying the price in road rage.

“I'm going to Catalina, Ray. I'd hoped you'd be here to come along.”

He urged her to go. He did not want to think of her pining for him in Thousand Oaks.

“Who'll crew for you?”

“We'll go in Julia's boat.”

After he hung up and lay fully awake he decided that all this talk about Julia was meant to do what it did, make him jealous. Jealous of that little neurotic?

Tuttle was a resilient man, but to have been seen by Horvath cowering in his office while Hazel raged without was worse than humbling. The silver lining was that, having changed the locks on the door, he seemed at last rid of the dragon who had occupied his outer office. He closed his account at the bank, delighted with the balanceâHazel had a business head on her shoulders, no doubt of thatâand opened an account at another bank. He had feared that she would wipe him out with a single check, but if she tried that now she would get a surprise. Tuttle still had a card or two up his sleeve.

But he was ashamed to face Horvath, assuming he had regaled the department with stories of Tuttle huddled behind the locked door of his office. On the other hand, what might Hazel not have carted off if Cy hadn't surprised her filling that shopping bag?

Sitting at Hazel's desk, trying to figure out what she might have taken away, he fiddled with the phone, and old messages began to play. He let it go on. It was like having the radio on when you worked. Most of the calls were from Barbara the paralegal, reporting on her work. Hazel had gotten her money out of that girl, presuming she had been paid. He was startled to hear the distinctive snarl of Cassirer coming from the machine.

“I've decided I don't need a lawyer. Send me a bill.”

Hazel burst into the message, answering the phone, and so she had been recorded too.

“Professor Cassirer?”

“You get that? I'm dropping Tuttle. I don't need a lawyer. What can he do I can't do anyway?”

“Now listen. We have done a great deal of work for you, engaged outside help, run up expenses.”

“Send me a bill.”

“It's not just the money! Your case represents a rich new field for Mr. Tuttle.”

Tuttle was nodding and he liked that. How could Cassirer resist her honeyed tones? This was not the voice with which Hazel called him an idiot. But that voice came more and more into play as the conversation went on. Hazel was not going to let Cassirer go.

“Hey, that's it. It's over, okay? Send me the bill. You want to sue me for dropping a lawyer, go ahead.”

“You idiot!” Hazel finally said, but Cassirer had hung up.

There was another side to Hazel, no doubt of that. Insubordinate, pushy, a pain in the neck, but loyal in her way. She had
been his champion with Cassirer. Mr. Tuttle. Tuttle would have dropped the guy in a minute, glad to get rid of him. He wondered if Hazel had gotten around to sending him a bill. It would never be paid now. Too bad. Hazel would have really socked it to him.

Eventually Tuttle's courage returned, and he was seen again in the haunts of men: the pressroom at the courthouse, across the street sipping a Diet Coke with Agnes Lamb, his eye on the door lest Peanuts find him consorting with the enemy. But it was because his self-esteem had not fully returned that he passed on the information to Agnes.

“You had a stakeout on Andrew Bernardo's apartment?”

“Right. Cassirer was my client. Andrew was his enemy. You never know what a stakeout will turn up.”

“So what did it turn up? You weren't there when it happened, were you?”

“Not at the time, no. Peanuts and I had gone to dinner. Before we went Mabel Gorman showed up and went inside.”

“So?”

“She was wearing tennis shoes.”

“Everybody wears tennis shoes.”

“I don't. You don't. But didn't the one who clobbered Cassirer leave tennis shoe prints in the snow?”

“I've talked with Mabel Gorman. She tried to see Andrew Bernardo. She's just a little bitty thing.”

“You don't have to be Sammy Sosa to swing a bat.”

“She was on Andrew's side, wasn't she, in the big academic battle?”

“Have you talked with Lily St. Clair?”

“Tuttle, we have talked to them all, and we will talk with them some more.

“Check their tennis shoes.”

“I'm not that kind of girl.”

“You think because she was a woman she and Gloria Monday saw eye to eye? No way. Lily was after anything with shorts.”

“In tennis shoes?”

“She even had it for Zalinksi.”

“Meaning?”

“A woman scorned!”

Agnes finished her Coke. “Pretty farfetched, Tuttle. How's Hazel?”

Oh no. Even Agnes knew. Had he become a figure of fun to everyone? He had half a mind to call Hazel and tell her to get to hell back to work. He needed a buffer against his enemies.

Father Dowling noticed that Raymond Bernardo came with his mother to the noon Mass but did not come forward to receive communion, as he hadn't at the funeral Mass for his father. The laicized priest is no longer an uncommon phenomenon, but still it was odd to have one in the pews of his own church. It used to be said that a nun could be recognized at a hundred yards no matter what she wore, a jab at the alleged poor taste in clothing on the part of those who doffed the habit. The habit did not make the nun, nor did the collar the priest. Whatever Raymond's status, laicized or not, he was a priest forever, in the words of ordination
that would have been pronounced over him. What did he make of his brother Andrew?

“You think he killed that man?” Father Dowling had asked Phil Keegan.

“He admits to getting rid of the body.”

“To divert suspicion from himself.”

“And then he wanted to tell us he had done it. You know that.”

“Because he thought better of what he had done.”

“Roger, it's out of my hands now. I'm neither judge nor jury; I just tell them what we've found out, and the trial can decide who did what.”

Father Dowling looked at his old friend. “You're being disingenuous.”

“I don't even know what it means.”

“I can't believe you haven't formed an opinion of your own.”

“Of course I have.”

“What is it?”

“Andrew could have done it. Roger, we found his palm top at the scene of the crime.”

“Outside his own front door.”

“He says he didn't carry the palm top with him often. He thought it was on the desk of his campus office.”

“Was it?”

“Roger, he could say it had been stolen, and I wouldn't know if he were telling the truth.”

That afternoon Father Dowling drove to the campus. The guard halted him, saw the collar, and waved him through.

“I wonder where I would find faculty offices.”

“All over the place. It depends on the department.”

“English.”

“You want Henley Hall, Father. Who you looking for?”

“There's something I want to check. Thanks.”

“Anytime, Father.”

There were lots of places not to park on campus, unless one were handicapped. We seem to have become a nation of the halt and lame, considering all the special places reserved for them. Of course
handicapped
has become an analogous term. After locating Henley Hall and circling it several times, Roger Dowling saw someone leaving a space and was able to claim it before anyone else did.

Henley Hall was not one of the new buildings. Built of roughly hewn granite blocks it rose to its green tile roof, which extended out over the walls, giving the three-story building a squat look. A ramp had been added to the wide old-fashioned entryâfor the handicapped. Smokers huddled under the dripping eaves. The temperature had risen, and yesterday's snow had begun to melt. Great icicles had formed on the rain gutters of Henley. Inside he found a glass case with a list of who and what the building housed. Bernardo, Andrew, 203.

The stairway was wide with a smooth granite ledge on which the hands of millions had moved on the upward climb. Room 203 was in a corner of the building, and the frosted glass in its door was illumined from within. He had considered searching the list in the entryway to see if anyone else was in 203. The lighted door might be his answer. He tapped on it.

“Advance to be recognized,” a voice boomed from within.

Father Dowling went in, stopping after three paces. The room was redolent of new and old body odors. Their source was obviously the smiling bearded man seated at one of the desks.

“You share this room with Andrew Bernardo?”

“Take a pew, Father. Yes, I do. Terrible what's happened. You a friend of the family?”

“I know them.”

“You said the Mass for his father.”

“So you were there.”

“In the back.” He identified himself as Foster, then pointed to the nameplate, as if to show they matched. He seemed to want to add more to his statement as to why he had been in St. Hilary's the morning of Fulvio Bernardo's funeral. Father Dowling sat at Andrew's desk. There was a photograph of Jessica, of his parents, and of a lovely young woman he recognized as the Gloria Monday who had been vocal in separating herself from what Andrew had done.

“There were empty seats,” he said.

“The usher said there weren't.” Had this white lie been a corporal work of mercy for those already in the church? How had Andrew managed to share an office with this fellow?

“What's that?”

“A kind of air conditioner. Andrew always had it on. Asthma or something.”

Father Dowling turned it on. There was a hum but not a noisy one. Breathing became less penitential.

“Do you think Andrew killed that man?”

“Cassirer? I don't think so. I will testify for him if he asks. Cassirer was slandering him, of course, but Andrew was not easily provoked. He is the only officemate I've had who lasted more than a semester. I must rub people the wrong way. But he never complained.”

What would a jury make of such a testimonial?

“It's all circumstantial,” Foster added. “A good lawyer should be able to get the case thrown out.”

“There is some evidence.”

“What?”

“His palm top was found at the scene of the crime.”

Foster laughed, then laughed some more. Father Dowling waited.

“She must have lost it then?”

“She?”

“Lily St. Clair. She's in English too. She was in here the other day and took the palm top.”

“You saw her do it?”

“It was there in that little stand when I turned to this bookshelf, and when I turned back it was gone.”

“Why would she take it?”

“You'll have to ask her that.”

“Didn't you say anything?”

“No. She could just have denied it. I couldn't ask her to empty her pockets and purse. But I know she took it. Anyway, Andrew never used it much. The only time he mentioned it was to complain about it.”

“Maybe I will ask her.”

“I suppose you'll have to bring me into it.”

“Maybe not. We'll see.”

“She was kind of nuts about Cassirer, I think. You'd have to be nuts to like that guy.”

Having found far more than he expected, Father Dowling was overwhelmed by a desire for fresh air. He thanked Foster for taking the time to talk with him.

“No need to rush off, Father.”

“Perhaps another time.”

The corridor itself was a relief, but the outdoors, once he pushed through the entrance and stood on the front steps, was glorious. He stood and inhaled deeply, taking in a bit of secondhand smoke from the huddled smokers. Were they the same ones who had been there when he went in? Once restored, he went
inside again and consulted the building directory. Dr. Lily St. Clair was in room 119.

He tapped on the unillumined door of 119 and received no answer. A card pinned to a cork board beside the door gave him the office hours of Dr. St. Clair. According to it she should be in. He tapped again. Still no answer. He left the building again, went to his car, lit his pipe, and looked around at the campus. It had been here all along, and yet it was a strange place to him.

As he sat there he turned on WBBM for the weather, to see if more snow was on the way. Commercials were interrupted by news items. Yet another faculty member at St. Edmund's had been attacked. They went to their reporter on the spot.

As he listened to the on-the-spot report of the attack on Professor Lily St. Clair, Father Dowling noted the antenna sprouting from a van not five spaces from his own. The television crew. He got out of the car and went over to it. The back doors were open, and a monitor carried the interview.

Lily stood supported by a sheepish officer from campus security. She had called security on her cell phone and stayed right where it had happened until they came.

“This is where it happened.” Her arm swept out. “Someone came up behind me and threw something over my head. My resistance surprised him.”

“Attempted rape?”

“A botched attempt!” Her chin lifted and her eyes shone.

The attacker had fled, and she had not seen him. She had to struggle to get the blanket off her head.

The real police arrived then, and Lily began her story again. Father Dowling went back to his car. When he arrived at the rectory, Marie had the television on in the kitchen.

“Well, they can't blame this on Andrew Bernardo,” she said with some satisfaction.

Lily St. Clair had been taken to the student infirmary, where she was asked if her assailant had raped her. Her eyes rounded in disbelief.

She explained. She had spent months in an evening class at the Y learning how to disable rampant males. Her knee, she learned, was her most powerful weapon. If there was any defect in the class it was its similarity to training soldiers with broomsticks. The instructor was a woman, so practicing counterattacks was largely theoretical. Sometimes as she jogged about the campus on her daily run, her tennis shoes not quite absorbing the impact of the sidewalk, Lily had an impulse to carom off her path and flatten a passing male with what she knew of his vulnerability. Her confidence grew to the point that she blamed the victims rather than the perpetrators of rape. Any woman could defend herself!

“So how did it happen?”

They ringed her bed like an attentive seminar, a male student from the campus paper, a toothy woman from the Trib, Detective Agnes Lamb, and assorted medical personnel.

“A sneak attack. From behind. Just before he struck, I heard something, but it was too late to react.”

The weapon had apparently been a baseball bat, an aluminum one. The bonging sound the blow made had been heard up and down the street, but no one had seen the assailant. The blanket thrown over her head had cushioned the blow. Agnes Lamb had been at the scene of the attack, had bagged up and sent downtown the aluminum bat. Of course the MO would be what everyone noticed. Maybe this would help Andrew.

“How long will they keep you here?” the
Trib
reporter asked.

“I feel ready to go now.”

The infirmary was not a hospital. Lily had not been rolled into an emergency ward and examined; she had been driven to the infirmary by campus security, along with one of those who had heard the sound of the bat hitting her head and helped her inside, where she was put to bed. As a rape victim she might have commanded more attention. But then word spread, and the result was this rather pleasant interview. It was the student reporter who remarked on the similarity of the attack on Lily and on Horst Cassirer.

“I've half-expected it,” she said.

“You have?”

“Horst and I were very close.” Such statements were now made while boldly looking the inquirer in the eye, to surprise there any moral judgment. The reporter understood.

“Did you live together?”

“Not at present.”

“You broke up?”

“No!”

“I know you were his big defender on the committee that turned him down.”

“And now I've paid the price.”