The Only Good Priest (20 page)

Authors: Mark Richard Zubro

BOOK: The Only Good Priest

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At the newspaper they engaged in an interminable debate as to who should go inside, who should stay with the van, and what to do with me.

Finally Stephanie said, “For Christ's sake, let's take a vote like we always do and be done with it.”

All of them going inside passed five to one. Carrying me along passed four to two. I wished it had lost. They tied a scarf around my entire face to muffle any noise I might try to make. Good thing because, unmuffled, my screams as they jostled me out of the van, and then up the stairs, would have been enough to wake the ghost voters of Chicago. I only passed out once.

Inside, Stephanie propped me between herself and a wall. I didn't have the strength to fight her. I concentrated on breathing easily to keep the pain under control.

A major squabble broke out upstairs. I accidentally began an exasperated breath, which came to a painful halt. There were several loud thumps, as of furniture being rudely tossed aside.

Moments later, two heavily bundled figures hurried toward us down the narrow interior stairs.

“What's up?” Stephanie said.

One of them said, “We quit. They're nuts. We're going back to Boston.”

“Stop them!” came a harrowing shriek from the top of the stairs. The two women scuttled out the door.

In the middle of the recriminations, charges, and countercharges, they let slip the fact that they'd found someone in the building. I feared it was Monica. Moments later, the appearance of the bruised and battered newspaper owner confirmed this. They'd tied her hands. Her open mink coat revealed her evening gown draped in tatters on her body. She glared at her
captors but gave me a rueful look and a half smile. They shoved her toward me, telling us both to sit. The push tipped her off balance. She stumbled and landed on top of me. I howled in agony. They ignored us and piled into the composing room, which was on this floor. Stephanie stood in the doorway and ignored us. From the occasional crashes it sounded as if they were breaking every piece of furniture in the place. From what they said, it turned out Priscilla was having trouble finding her hidden stash. She complained that in the cleanup after the last break-in someone had moved her stuff.

Our sarcastic terrorist, who talked in an incongruously high little-girl's whine, voiced mounting contempt and sarcasm at Priscilla's ineptitute.

Meanwhile Monica, realizing my pain, did as much as was possible with her hands tied to ease my discomfort. She asked what happened, but a snarl from Stephanie put a halt to that.

Stephanie did not move to stop what happened next. A deadly silence was broken briefly when Priscilla and Sally exchanged brutal accusations, and then the fight was on. The smashing and crashing of various objects were the only sounds that emanated from the ominously silent foes.

The brief battle ended in a triumphant screech. “Money!” someone yelled. I guessed the tumbling of a piece of furniture had revealed the hiding place.

Stephanie forestalled any renewal of hostilities by a simple suggestion: “Let's go.” They almost left without a vote or a debate, but they had to decide what to do with us.

Eventually Monica and I lay together on the floor in back of the van. Priscilla sat in the seat nearest us. Sally took the wheel. In the brief trip from building to van, between bouts of pain, I thought the storm had picked up in intensity. They were in trouble if they thought they could make a daring escape by van. The slipping and sliding on the city streets was worse than before. Priscilla gave directions on getting from Lake Shore Drive to the Stevenson Expressway. I didn't think we hit speeds higher than twenty miles an hour. My perspective only let me
see occasional passing street lamps, lighting the wind-driven snow. It hurt too much to raise my arm to see my watch, but it had to be nearly dawn.

I found that if I relaxed my muscles as much as possible while avoiding any movement, the pain was manageable. This was a hell of a trick. I could do it up to seventy-five percent of the time.

“Priscilla, what the hell is going on?” Monica said.

“Tell them to shut the fuck up,” said the terrorist from the front.

So Priscilla talked, knowing her rival couldn't leave the wheel to fight. She jerked a thumb at me and said, “Pretty boy here and his jerk lover broke up our last hiding place. I have friends in St. Louis who'll keep us safe and be able to dispose of the prisoners without any trouble.”

“Can't we work something out?” Monica asked.

Taking a shot in the dark and speaking between painful gasps, I said, “She and Prentice killed Sebastian. That's why they kidnapped Jerry.”

“I don't believe it. What possible reason could they have?” Monica said.

“That gets a little complicated, but I've got the time to explain,” Priscilla said. “And since you'll be dead soon anyway, I don't mind telling you.”

Monica stared in shock.

Priscilla rubbed her gloved hands together almost gleefully. “It all started when we planned our revolutionary activities,” she said. We got a tirade about the male establishment, patriarchal stupidity, and the evilness of the world in general. “Our problem came when we trusted another man.” She sighed. “Prentice, as you know, is my brother. He and I were close as children. I felt sorry for him. Plus, he agreed.”

“To what?” I asked.

Suddenly the van lurched, swayed, spun. Horns blared and I saw the top of a semi rumble past inches from the windows on
the left side of the van. Infighting, recriminations, and finally a resumption of movement followed.

Priscilla said in a stage whisper, “Some people think they know how to lead this group.” She pulled her coat closer around herself.

“What did Prentice agree to?” I asked between clenched teeth. The spin had thrown off the rigidly comfortable position I'd managed to achieve.

“Hurts, huh? Good. You managed to fuck everything up. But not as badly as dear naive Prentice.” She sighed. “He agreed to deliver a package to the chancery late at night. We told him it was a harmless smoke bomb. And it would have been, except Sally, our terrorist, isn't as good at making bombs as she claims. Still, we didn't want to kill anyone. If the damn security guard had let the package sit five more minutes, there would have been lots of broken glass, tons of smoke, and maybe a little fire. Unfortunately, he didn't. More unfortunately, Bartholomew got suspicious of Prentice. The old son of a bitch had a date with Prentice that night. Once a month they had sex for half an hour. It's all he could afford after scrimping from his pension each month, and at that Prentice gave him a discount.”

She gave a harsh laugh. “Bartholomew had told Prentice he loved him. What a joke. The old fool. Prentice decided to be late for their rendezvous that night. The old bastard went looking for him.”

“The old guy was shrewder than you thought,” I said. “He suspected something, and he knew where to go.”

Priscilla laughed. “Nah. He was lucky. He walked in the front door of Bruce's as Prentice walked out the back. Bartholomew followed, saw the placing of the packageâ”

“Guessed the contents of the package or the purpose,” Monica broke in.

“âand ran for home,” Priscilla finished.

Monica said, “He saw the story about the chancery bombing in the paper the next day. I remember how excited he was. Now I know why.”

“Excited and a blabbermouth. He didn't want to go to the police because he loved Prentice, but he told that goddam Sebastian. Such a fucking goody-two-shoes priest. A saint for our times!” She snorted. “Everybody loved him. Running around listening to people, doing good works.”

Another nasty lurch of the van, and pain shot through my side again. They'd crammed their belongings around me tightly, which kept me nearly immobile, an inadvertent kindness that helped keep me from constant agony. My feet were cold. Dampness had crept further into my clothes. As the trip progressed the inside of the windows had fogged up. I was mostly aware of shadows passing. I presumed the lighter shadows represented passing cars, trucks, or streetlights.

Priscilla talked on. Sebastian had gone to Prentice, told him what he knew, urged him to turn himself in. Prentice, not being the brightest, and Sebastian being one of the smartest, figured the prostitute hadn't acted on his own. Prentice blurted out enough of the truth for the priest to guess the Lesbians for Freedom and Dignity were behind it.

Priscilla said, “Sebastian confronted me. I laughed at him. He didn't get mad. He never did. He looked at me with those pitying, priestly, know-it-all eyes and told me if Prentice and I didn't go to the police, he would.” She drew a deep breath, rubbed her hand over the window glass, and glanced out the opening she made. “We decided to kill him. Poison in the altar wine. Prentice set up for mass every week so it was easy. That altar wine tastes like shit anyway. We get cases of that generic crap the archdiocese puts out. Sally had connections to some groups that gave us arsenic. We put some in the altar wine.”

I'd begun alternately to sweat and shiver. I could no longer distinguish between dampness from the melting snow and sweat from my pain-racked body. I forced my mind to listen to Priscilla's continuing explanation.

On Sundays Prentice had administered the doses Priscilla gave him. She thought it would've acted slower. She shrugged. “I was surprised it took effect so soon. Anyway he died, and we
thought we were safe. Then old Bartholomew started up again. The bastard got suspicious. He warned Prentice.”

“So he had to die,” Monica said.

“Not quite then,” Priscilla replied.

Their words came as if from a distance. The pain was all that kept me awake. Each lurch of the van brought me back to full consciousness.

“Of course it was this asshole and his pretty lover who screwed things up.” She aimed a kick at me. The sleeping bags and other paraphernalia piled around me spoiled her aim. She missed my ribs, but the jolt to my side was almost as bad. I gasped for air for several minutes.

She explained that our snooping around had worried them. Our relationship with Bartholomew, especially his trust in us, had caused them to take action. They had wanted to avoid killing him, thinking that another death in the group at this time would be too suspicious.

“Him and his buddy”âshe jerked a thumb at meâ“convinced the old son of a bitch they really cared for him. Bartholomew began to talk about telling them. He got brave enough to threaten Prentice and me together. He had to die.”

Prentice had lured him to the trap at Faith headquarters. They started the fire at the front and back downstairs exits.

“I pointed out to most of the members that since we were all conspirators in a murder, whether accidental or deliberate, we'd go to jail just as surely as Prentice. So we decided to grab your nephew to stop you from snooping around.” Her tone was ingenuous, almost rueful. “Things got out of hand. Ultimately we didn't know what to do with the kid. We didn't tell the milktoasts in the group, but I couldn't even convince Stephanie to have him killed.”

Monica asked, “Why were the
Gay Tribune
offices trashed?”

“Every time you wrote an editorial we disagreed with, the group voted to do it. But you never got the message.”

“Why'd Prentice tell us so much about you the first time we talked to him?” I asked.

“He's a blabbermouth who wants to look big and feel important. He thought we were safe. Thinking is not Prentice's strong suit. He figured he'd give you useless information, and you'd go away.”

After a jolt from the van and a gasp from me, I managed to ask the next question. “Why'd you threaten Sebastian that Sunday?”

“He talked about going to the police again. I was sick of his shit. I knew he'd be dead soon, and I didn't think I'd be overheard.”

She fell silent. I listened to the tires crunching over unplowed snow. I was shivering almost continuously now. I could turn my head just enough to look at Monica. She gave me an encouraging smile mixed with sympathy. As encumbered as I was, although without the pain, she couldn't rescue us.

Priscilla hummed to herself, a toneless sound almost of content and happiness. I dozed between jabs of pain, awakening to cold or heat, shivering and sweating.

The next time I woke clearly, grayness penetrated the misted windows. Full morning. I glanced toward Monica. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly open in sleep. My ribs ached, but almost bearably.

“Where are we?” I asked the van at large.

Stephanie's voice sounded sleepy. “Pontiac.”

“We're stopped,” I said.

“Accident ahead. Must have just happened.”

“Go around,” Priscilla snapped.

“We should stop to help,” Stephanie said.

Priscilla and Sally spoke in unison. “No.”

Priscilla said, “We almost hit them because we couldn't see them. Probably nobody can see us from behind either. We've got to get out of here.”