The Prudence of the Flesh (25 page)

He let it go. It was part of his professional manner never to reveal his ignorance. “So who ran the tests?”

A laboratory right here in Fox River, as it happened. Pippen added that she probably shouldn't be telling him all this. He assured her it was only deep background, and he left her with the name of Fenwick Labs. A sense of destiny came upon him when he remembered that Larson, a serious drinker and sometime companion in alcoholic revels, worked at Fenwick.

Tetzel found him bellied up to the bar of the Tempest and elbowed his way in beside him. “Let's sit in the corner so I can buy you a drink.”

“I've got a drink.”

“I meant the next one.”

Like Pippen, Larson was a person of great professional propriety. Pippen had only the pardonable weakness of a woman, but Larson's Achilles' heel was a debility Tetzel shared. The juice of the grape—or more literally, single malt scotch—made Larson vulnerable to Tetzel's subtle inquisitiveness, but patience was the watchword. An hour and a half had passed before Tetzel asked, as if out of the blue, what Larson thought of DNA testing.

“Personally, it sounds to me on a par with consulting the entrails of birds,” the reporter said.

“Not at all, my dear fellow. Not at all.”

“But in these circus trials of recent years, so-called experts on the matter have disagreed profoundly.”

“There is no possibility of disagreement if the test is done correctly.”

“Have you yourself ever done such a test?”

“Strange that you should ask.”

The test Larson described was without doubt the one that interested
Tetzel: a Band-Aid on the one side, a toothbrush on the other. “More than sufficient.”

“For what?”

“A match.”

“Positive?”

“Beyond dispute.”

“Do you have time for another?”

Does the bear sleep in the woods?

It was early in the morning when Tetzel sat down at his computer in the pressroom of the courthouse. At that hour, he had the place to himself. Was this how Woodward and Bernstein had felt when they recounted the confidences of Deep Throat? They were probably sober when they wrote—all kinds of types got into journalism nowadays—but Tetzel had been careful to nurse his drinks as he sat with Larson, keeping refills for the intrepid scientist coming. When he rose to go, Larson said he might have a nightcap. It was certain he had a snoot full. Tetzel, on the other hand, found his mind sharpened by the relatively small amount he had drunk. His fingers were a little rubbery on the keyboard, causing any number of mishits and typos, but with spell check he could clean them up in a trice. And so he began, conscious that what he was writing was many levels above his ordinary output.

He finished a draft of the story; he honed and refined it. He printed it out and with one eye closed read it critically. He sat back. Like God in Genesis, he saw that what he had made was good. He sent it as an e-mail attachment to Quirk and went home to a bed that had a tendency to spin. He had suggested a headline, always risky with Quirk:
GREGORY BARRETT PROVED FATHER OF ACCUSER'S SON
.

Gregory Barrett reread
Huckleberry Finn
at least once a year, and he was rereading it now. As the raft on which Huck and Jim were floating to freedom neared Cairo, Illinois, Barrett held the book open against his chest and found himself wishing that he had stayed in Cairo. His apparent good fortune in being invited to move to the Chicago area had been no more than apparent. His program was now heard from coast to coast on the publicly supported network, so the promise that had brought him back home had proved true, but his return now threatened to be his undoing.

A woman he could not remember accused him of sexual misbehavior while he was still a priest. The woman had heard him on the air and, she had told Barfield, the archdiocesan lawyer in these matters, suddenly drew forth from the darkness of memory horrible events she had suppressed. She had dismissed with disdain the suggestion that she receive compensation and let bygones be bygones. The accusation, never made quite public, ticked like a time bomb that must surely eventually explode. Nancy knew him better than any other human being, and he
could see the effect the accusation had had on her. So he had gone to see his old classmate Roger Dowling.

What a basis for an otherwise pleasant reunion! He had always liked Roger, and liked him more when he saw how he had emerged from his own difficulties. St. Hilary's seemed to Barrett the kind of parish they had dreamed of having during their seminary years. Roger had been wonderfully reassuring. If only the matter could be kept on such a humane basis. But Barfield had insisted that he see Amos Cadbury, an unpleasant duty made more tolerable by Roger Dowling's involvement. Barrett could tell, though, that neither the venerable dean of the Fox River bar nor his canon-lawyer classmate could see any easy way out of the matter.

Then the charge, Barfield informed him, had been made more serious still: He was accused of fathering the woman's child. Whether wisely or not, Barrett had enlisted the support of the seedy Tuttle, in the shameful hope that he could find some compensating dirt about his accuser. What Tuttle had turned up was records that increased Barrett's difficulty. To his horror, he found that now he could remember the woman and those long-ago events. What he had done then had been the right thing to do, and it seemed Kafkaesque that his sympathetic pastoral help was now turned against him.

Roger Dowling had surprised him by suggesting that this was actually a turn for the better: A charge of parentage was one that could be put to the test. In the event, the test seemed unnecessary. The woman, surprisingly, withdrew her charge. Prayers were indeed sometimes answered. He could feel the relief in Nancy when he held her in his arms.

Thomas said, “They should make the tests anyway. She might change her mind again.”

That was not something Barrett was inclined to insist on. The testing could remain a possibility that would protect him if indeed she did change her mind.

Tests had been made, though, and tests whose result claimed that he was indeed the father of that woman's son. When he had gone to Amos Cadbury's office, he had assumed that it would be a session where his liberation would be celebrated. He recalled the psalm, said so often in his clerical days,
Laqueus contritus est, et liberati sumus.
The trap has been sprung, and we are freed. Instead he had walked into the most incredible claim of all.

“But that's impossible.”

He could see how his words affected Amos Cadbury. What had the man expected, a shamefaced admission that he had been lying all along, that of course he was the most loathsome of men, a priest who had traded on the trust and confidence of a confused young woman for his own selfish ends, got her with child, and arranged for the whole burden to be put upon her? Did anyone believe he was capable of such a thing, or at least had been? His angry reaction had turned the day, and it was the testing itself that came under scrutiny. When Horvath arrived, Barrett could almost sympathize with the spot the lieutenant was in, a spot just vacated by himself, but Tuttle! Everyone in the room immediately recognized that Tuttle's involvement with the so-called evidence tainted it—and then to say that he had received the stuff from Thomas!

He had not told Nancy of the meeting in Amos Cadbury's office. He wanted Thomas to have the same opportunity he had
had, to dismiss the claim out of hand. What would Thomas have had to do with Tuttle?

Thomas was at a reception given for prospective Notre Dame students at a suburban hotel. It was now nearly midnight. Nancy had gone to bed; Gregory sat up with
Huckleberry Finn
, awaiting the return of his son, not wanting to go to bed before he had given Thomas the opportunity to laugh away the charge that had been made against him.

Of course, the charge was impossible. He would not doubt his son as others had doubted him, as if even the most preposterous accusation should carry more weight than the absence of any basis for it.

The headlights from the car swept past the study windows when Thomas turned in the driveway. Greg resumed reading, listening to the garage door open and then close. It made an awful racket in the night. The kitchen light was switched on, the refrigerator opened, and in a minute Thomas appeared in the doorway of the study.

“Still up?” he asked his father.

“Did you have a good time?”

Thomas yawned. “Wonderful. They showed a film.
Rudy
.”

“Sit down for a minute.”

“That's about as long as I'll last.”

“Okay. I'll just give you a quick version of a meeting I was called to today.”

It was a quick version. He felt that he could reduce it to thirty words or less: charge of parentage now backed up by DNA testing. He had finished the short form and taken a deep breath, about to go on, when Thomas spoke.

“And someone wondered where the materials for such a test had been found?” He had sat in the desk chair and turned it toward his father.

“Yes.”

“I gave them to Tuttle, Dad. I collected the stuff and took it to him. You said what Father Dowling's reaction was to her second accusation. Now it can be proved. Well, why wait—”

“Tom, those tests purport to show that I am the father of that woman's son.”

“All they can show is that you're the father of your son. I gave them my toothbrush, along with a used Band-Aid you had thrown in your wastebasket, from that little cut you had.”

“But why?”

“Dad, it was like a problem on the SATs. The point had been reached when all seemed lost. Scientific tests would establish the truth beyond all possible doubt. What to do? Undermine confidence in the tests. The way you described Tuttle, I was sure he would take the bait, but whether he could convince anyone—”

“You deliberately prompted those tests with materials that would guarantee a positive match.”

“And then when all the whooping and hollering begins, I come forward and say, ‘Hey, that was my toothbrush. You've just proved I'm my father's son.' Imagine the reaction. Who's going to suggest another test?”

Tom looked at him brightly, the beginning of a smile, waiting to be congratulated. After a moment, Gregory opened his arms, and his son gave him a big bear hug. Against his father's shoulder, he said, “I'm almost sorry now that it was all for nothing.” Tom stood. “I thought I was being so shrewd.”

“Oh, you were shrewd, all right. Go to bed.”

Then he was alone. He had thought that the nadir had been reached several times before, but this was a subbasement indeed. He lit a cigarette and immediately put it out. He would quit smoking. Maybe he would go on bread and water. But he sat on, alone, pensive. The only thought he had was that his own son had assumed he was guilty as charged.

In the morning, it became clear that what Tom had done could not remain a semiprivate joke. The story was on the front page.

GREGORY BARRETT PROVED FATHER OF ACCUSER'S SON
.

Part Four