On the Fifth Day (6 page)

abouts over the last six months and whether he had letters or e-mails from him, whether Ed had suffered what they called

"a crisis of faith." Thomas recalled the scribbled "
De Pro

fundis!
" on the postcard with its overtones of despair, but he shook his head.

Then, very politely, always calling him
sir
in that formal way some officials have that somehow reinforces the impres

sion that they are in control, they started on him. He had, they observed, a history of "dissident opinions" and "countercul

ture beliefs." Had he ever been approached by people who avowed violent solutions to the issues close to his heart? Had he ever been to the Middle East? Did he maintain connections with people who had?

The whole encounter had been surreal, and a couple of times Thomas had wanted--again--to laugh, but there was 35

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

another part of him that wanted to curl up until they went away, though whether that was because he was afraid for him

self, or for what his brother might have been involved in, he couldn't say.

Except that there was no way that Ed was involved with ter

rorists. No way at all.

Did he really know that? Did he know anything substantial about his brother over the last half-dozen years?

The only time he did actually laugh was when they rose to leave and he, mustering a defiance he didn't feel, demanded what had prompted this absurd line of questioning.

"I'm sorry, sir," said Kaplan. "That's classified."

And even then Thomas's laugh didn't ring quite true, be

cause if the world had strayed into the realm of such TV

cliches, he really should be afraid.

"How did my brother die?" he demanded.

"That is still being investigated."

"So you are going to tell me nothing?" he said.

"We're not at liberty to go into details at this time," said Palfrey, the one with the open, smiling face.

"Would I find out more if I hopped a flight to Manila?"

He was being flippant, testing their boundaries, though he also knew that he had no job, so a trip to the Philippines was only unlikely, not impossible. He thought there was a frac

tional hesitation before the other one spoke.

"They won't let you into the country," said Palfrey. Thomas stared at him.

"And if they did," said the other, without a hint of emotion,

"we'd pick you up the moment you got back."

"And, sir," said Palfrey, "I advise you to discuss this matter with nobody. The investigation is ongoing."

What exactly was being investigated--or who--they didn't say.

CHAPTER 9

Thomas spent a half hour on the phone to the State Depart

ment and another ten minutes trying, without success, to reach the American ambassador in Manila. He learned nothing from either call. His brother had died in the Philippines, but how he had died or what he had been doing there in the first place, no one was saying. Whether they knew or not, he couldn't begin to guess, and though it might be normal when dealing with be

reaved relatives, he sensed their wariness. He felt his irritation mounting as he was shuttled from one uninformative recep

tionist to another, but he also knew instinctively that his customary bluster would get him nowhere. He was being stonewalled by people who wouldn't be intimidated by any

thing he had to say. In the end, he thanked them wearily and slid the receiver back into the cradle.

"Nothing?" said Jim.

Thomas shook his head.

"I don't get it," he said. "I'm being dodged."

"I don't suppose you know any powerful politicians, am

bassadors, officials in the State Department, things like that?"

Thomas turned so quickly and with a stare so level and baleful that Jim's face fell.

"What?" said the priest. "I just meant . . ."

"I know," said Thomas, regrouping fast. "Forget it. I thought you were . . ."

He shrugged and, registering the look of startled alarm on the priest's face, smiled.

"My wife, or rather my ex-wife, works for the State De

partment," he said, a little embarrassed. "She's not high up or anything and we don't talk so . . ."

Jim relaxed visibly.

"You don't want to call her over this?"

37

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

"No," said Thomas. He wasn't smiling now, and Jim knew better than to push the point.

"What about Devlin?" said Jim.

"Who?

"Devlin," said Jim as if it should be obvious. "Senator Zacharias Devlin; your brother knew him."

"Senator Devlin?" said Thomas, incredulous. "The familyvalues, school-prayer Republican? Ed knew him?"

"Met with him at least a few times."

"You don't sound impressed."

"You think I should be?"

"You're a priest," said Thomas, the smile returning.

"So?"

"Nothing," he said, "I just figured you religious types would have more in common with a guy like that."

Jim gave him a steady look. "You seem to have me con

fused with Pat Robertson," he said.

"My mistake," said Thomas, shrugging.

"You don't much like priests, do you?" said Jim.

"Not as a rule," said Thomas, bristling.

"Present company excepted, of course," said Jim.

"Of course."

The two men looked hard at each other, and for a moment the situation could have turned unpleasant.

"Tough day," said Jim. "For both of us."

He wasn't talking about the aftermath of Ed's death so much as the fact of it, and Thomas, who didn't want to appear hostile on this, just nodded and sighed and wondered why he couldn't simply grieve for his brother as a regular person would.

"I'm ready for a drink," said Jim. "You?"

"Sure, what the hell," said Thomas.

The priest pulled a bottle of Bushmills out of a kitchen cupboard and poured two generous measures into the bottoms of a pair of chipped mugs.

"We're low on crystal," he said, proffering one of the cups.

"I'd like to blame the Jesuits' vow of poverty, but we diocesans 38

A. J. Hartley

will take whatever we're given. We're just not given much these days."

"Oh, for the good old days of the Holy Roman Empire,"

said Thomas, "when charity meant . . ."

"Giving us your money," Jim completed for him, grinning.

"Now look at us. I've known Carmelites with better gear."

Thomas smirked and sipped the Irish. It was warm and smoky: familiar as childhood and as conflicting.

"It's good," he said, as if he'd never tasted it before.

"Let's see how badly the Illini are doing," said Jim, jabbing the remote toward the boxy TV.

"So how did Ed know Devlin?" Thomas said, deflecting his own thoughts.

"Not sure," said Jim, scowling at the game. "Met with him right after he got back from Italy. But that wasn't the first time."

"When did he come back?"

"Two months or so ago. The Js use a retreat house in Naples and he went out for a couple of weeks after he'd been helping out here. He was working on a book on early Christian sym

bology. No idea what interest Devlin might have had in him."

"Did you know Ed before he came to work here?"

"Not well. We'd met a couple of times at conferences and diocesan functions, but it's amazing how separate priests can be, especially when one is of the lowly diocesan clergy like yours truly, and one is of the exalted ranks of the papal stormtroopers."

Papal stormtroopers. It was an old joke, one that Thomas remembered Ed using in the days when they still talked. It wasn't that funny and hadn't been accurate for decades. The Jesuits didn't just take a vow of poverty. They also took a vow of obedience to the pope. Thomas supposed that had once meant something, but times change, and lately the Jesuits' fa

mously leftist intellectualism and social activism had stirred the impatience of the Vatican.

"You sure we've never met?" said Jim. "There's something about your face . . ."

"Don't think so," said Thomas.

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O n t h e F i f t h D a y

"Maybe you've been on the telly," said Jim, grinning. Thomas waited for the memory to catch, saw it in the priest's face, and opted to head it off.

"Actually, yes," he said. "I'm a high school teacher.
Was.
I made the grave error of telling a parent what I really thought about how he had raised his lying, cheating, plagiarizing, bul

lying thug of a son, something of which the school board took a dim view, doubly so since said parent worked for the local Fox affiliate. Not my finest hour."

Jim smiled, shrugged, and raised his glass.

"Here's to going out in style," he said. Thomas drank. The third quarter ended, and as the bright-orange-shirted Illinois players trooped off the court looking beaten, the TV

kicked into commercials.

"So this is how you spend your time?" said Thomas. He hadn't meant it to sound so snide. He sounded like that a lot lately, hearing it after it was too late to take it back. Jim just raised his eyebrows.

"When I'm not doing the masses," he said, "the sick visits, the pastoral meetings, the young-adult discussions, the hospi

tal calls, the endless parish meetings, coordinating . . ." he ticked them off on his fingers, "the drug and alcohol counsel

ing sessions, the community food bank, the baptism classes, the single-mom dinners, a dozen different support groups, deaconate training, funerals, community outreach. Then there are the real problems, like people who can't pay their rent and get tossed out into a Chicago winter . . ." he said, the anger in his voice building, though Thomas felt sure it wasn't directed at him. "It's not all sitting around saying the rosary."

"Or watching basketball," said Thomas, apologetic.

"A game I find tedious and baffling," Jim added. "In fact, it's a penance to watch it."

"And a kindness," said Thomas, raising his glass to him.

"Which is appreciated."

Jim shrugged to show there were no hard feelings.

"You liked Ed," said Thomas.

"Kindred spirit," said Jim. "And not just because he was a 40

A. J. Hartley

priest. He was more of a reader than me, but he didn't mind spending the afternoon washing pans at the soup kitchen. It's always nice to meet a priest whose liberation theology doesn't stay in the bookcase."

Thomas nodded and smiled.

"You think I should speak to the senator?" he said.

"Wouldn't hurt to try, I guess," said Jim.

Another silence.

"So," said Jim, eyes on the TV, "what happened? Between you and Ed, I mean. You didn't just drift apart. You looked happy enough together in those wedding pictures."

There were so many ways he could answer that, many of them things he had said before to others, many of them dodges or feints intended to wrong-foot the defense. But Thomas was tired and he probably would never see this lonely priest again after today.

"He ended my marriage," he said.

CHAPTER 10

Thomas sat in the reception room of Senator Zach Devlin's South Dearborn Street office and looked at his hands. He felt overawed by the place with its immaculate carpets, well-made furniture, and framed, official photographs of Devlin looking comfortable and imposing. Once he would have been de

lighted at the prospect of meeting with someone from the staff of a Republican senator, and would have gone in feeling con

fident and wittily aggressive, his pet subjects lining up in his head like paratroopers ready to jump.

I was wondering, Senator, how you could begin to defend a
policy--and I'm using the word in its loosest sense--so clearly
asinine . . .

Not lately, and certainly not today. Today he was antsy and 41

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

nervous, and once already in the last ten minutes he had con

sidered getting up and taking the elevator back down from the heady thirty-ninth floor and into Chicago's cold and blustery streets.

He had expected when he first called the senator's local of

fice to be dodged as he had when he had called Manila or--at best--to be given an address to write to, a phone number to reach some Washington flunky. What had happened was that he had been put on hold, then invited to make his pitch to a secretary, and then put on hold again, for longer this time. But just as he was ready to dismiss the whole venture and hang up, the secretary came back on the line and told him to come downtown this afternoon. She had sounded slightly surprised, impressed even. Thomas had put the phone down with some

thing like elation, but that faded as the hours wore on, and now that he was actually here he felt close to panic. The receptionist, a young blond girl with a bright, perky smile, answered her phone, said "Yes" twice and "Certainly"

once, and then hung up and looked at Thomas.

"Mr. Hayes will see you now," she said.

"Mr. Hayes?" said Thomas, getting slowly to his feet. It wasn't a real question, more an opportunity to steady himself.

"The senator's private secretary and chief of staff," she said, showing him to a paneled door.

"Right," Thomas muttered, taken aback. "Thanks."

Rod Hayes was about Thomas's age, though his cropped hair was starting to show a brush of silver about the temples. He wore black horn-rimmed glasses that could have made him look studious but looked instead as if they'd been lent to him to somehow balance his hearty athleticism. He was broad of chest and shoulder, and his sleek dark suit did nothing to hide a body that was well exercised and taut. His eyes, as they turned to Thomas, were gray, intelligent, and a little guarded. But that was understandable. If Homeland Security thought Thomas a dissident of the very-small-pond variety, it was at least possible that Hayes knew he was in the company of the political enemy.

42

A. J. Hartley

The smile he dredged up didn't try too hard and thus seemed real enough.

"Mr. Knight," he said, crossing from the window and ex