The Prudence of the Flesh (26 page)

There was unseemly celebration in the pressroom when Tetzel's scoop was revealed to have been based on a fraud. Quirk had listened patiently as Tetzel explained the investigative reporting that had gone into his piece, the careful checking.

“It is nothing but facts!” Tetzel insisted.

“You've been had, Tetzel.” Then, in an uncharacteristic addendum, “We've been had.”

Quirk offered him the opportunity to expose the phony test, but for a time Tetzel demurred. The thought of explaining in authoritative detail how he had been duped did not appeal. Still, better he do it than someone else. The piece he wrote was relegated to an inner page, in the manner of a minor correction of an earlier story. It carried no byline, and Tetzel did not complain. In the courthouse pressroom, it was assumed that Quirk had written the retraction.

“You should have come to me,” Tuttle said to him, almost sorry for his old foe. “I feel half responsible.”

“That is a new high for you.”

“Now, now. What is the word? Magnanimity. You will find it discussed by Aristotle.”

“How the hell would you know?”

Tuttle had seen it on the Web, but there seemed no need to tell Tetzel that he was not relying on primary sources.

The question was, what, if anything, should he, Tuttle, do about it? Tetzel had painted himself into a corner, but young Barrett had deliberately used Tuttle as an instrument of his deception. To say that the little lawyer was disillusioned did not approach the letdown he felt. The clear implication of what Thomas Barrett had done was to incriminate his father—and yet, apparently, he had admitted everything to his father. Gregory Barrett did not return Tuttle's calls. No matter. His hands were full with the unfortunate Pasquali. Gloria Daley was proving to be a slender reed on which to rest his defense.

“Of course, the body had already been put in the river when we went up to that parking area,” she said.

“Lover's lane.”

“I wish you wouldn't call it that.”

“Everyone calls it that.”

The conversation took place after the obsequies for Ned Bunting the day before, presided over by Monsignor Sledz. “Late?” Monsignor Sledz cried. “He was never late. Edward Bunting was the most punctual man in the world. A true son of the parish.” He put back his head and looked at the ornate ceiling of his church, as if seeking inspiration. Tuttle tuned him out. He knew all about Sledz and Ned Bunting. The pastor had driven the man to St. Hilary's.

Tuttle expressed some surprise at the venue of the funeral to Gloria Daley. From behind a black veil, she sighed. “He insisted
on it. Father Dowling, of course, did not contest his prior rights. I regard it as a belated apology to Ned.”

The funeral cortege had wound its way to the cemetery, and Tuttle had caught up with Gloria as they all moved away from the grave, having each sprinkled a few drops of holy water on the casket that would be lowered into the ground after all had withdrawn.

“I don't see Madeline.”

“She couldn't get away. The responsibility for the Benjamin Harrison branch has fallen entirely on her shoulders.”

“Pasquali will be exonerated, I guarantee you.”

She lifted her veil and looked at him. “You're sure he's innocent?”

“As a babe!” He peered at her. “Aren't you?”

“Let me tell you the awful thought that occurred to me.”

Tuttle looked over both shoulders as he listened to her, not wanting anyone else to hear her fantastic story about Fred Pasquali killing Ned, taking the body to the river, and then driving to the very spot with Gloria.

“We had never gone there before,” she said.

“I thought you and Ned were an item.”

She smiled as if from some eminence. “How quaint a phrase that is. But be that as it may, Fred and I were close.”

“You say he had never taken you to lovers' lane before?”

She looked at him sadly. “Have you ever been in love?”

“Tell me about it.”

“Sometimes I think it is an indiscriminate feeling that can be directed almost at will at a variety of objects.”

“Ned or Fred?”

“If you will.” She looked speculatively at Tuttle.

“You and Maddie and those two could have made a foursome.”

“That was my initial thought. Of course, Maddie saw all of Fred she wanted to see at work. She blamed him for the vagrants who commandeered those computers.” She paused. “Surely there can't be such dreadful things available on the Internet.”

Tuttle himself had taken a peek from time to time, and almost immediately cleared the screen—but once having activated such a site, he found that it returned unbidden at awkward moments. He had first learned this when Hazel let out a shriek. He ran into her office. She had pushed back from her computer, a hand over her mouth. With the other she pointed.

Tuttle rushed over and cleared the screen. “Not during working hours,” he said.

“I was writing a letter. It just suddenly jumped up.” Hazel would have sympathized with Madeline's reaction to the use to which the library computers were put by slack-jawed, unshaven men who reeked of body odor.

Her own had been comparable when Pasquali arrived at Tuttle's office to discuss strategy later that day. She nodded and looked at the client with a hangman's eyes, and Tuttle hurried Pasquali into his inner sanctum.

“But I have an alibi, Tuttle. I've been thinking.” Tuttle sat forward. “Gloria. We were together.”

Tuttle sat back, taking the precaution of gripping his desk first so that his chair would not get out of control and head for the wall behind him. “Yes, yes. We already know that.”

“We were there together. She was the one who saw the body first.”

“But the body was already in the water.”

“Of course it was in the water. How else could we have found it there?”

“How long had you been with her?”

“I picked her up and we went for a drive.”

“Not too long before the discovery?”

Pasquali made an impatient noise. “What difference does that make?”

“Where were you before you picked Gloria up?”

Pasquali saw the point of the question and sat back, staring at Tuttle.
Et tu,
Tuttle? “Do you think I killed that man?”

“In court, they will tell you to answer the question.”

“I was in church.”

“Church!”

“I was saying a novena, praying that everything would go right with Gloria and me.”

“What church?”

“St. Hilary's. She had been going there, and I thought the novena would be more effective there.” Pasquali looked over Tuttle's head as he spoke. “I don't have to say this, do I?”

“It would help if someone saw you in church.”

Pasquali thought. “There was some woman there all the time I was, a real busybody. She prowled along the side aisle as if she thought I was going to raid the poor box.”

“Marie Murkin!” Tuttle cried.

“I don't know her name.”

Tuttle was scribbling on a piece of paper. The body had been found at maybe three in the afternoon on Wednesday. If Pasquali was telling the truth, he would have been on his knees in St. Hilary's at, say, two o'clock. Maybe earlier. How long did a novena take?

“Nine days,” Pasquali answered.

“I mean each time.”

“Do you know who that woman was?”

“I'll look into it.” He corrected himself. “We'll look into it.”

When they left Tuttle's office, Hazel moved the stand on which her computer stood, getting it between herself and the door of the inner office. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Pasquali. Tuttle wouldn't have wanted her on the jury.

Tuttle drove them to St. Hilary's, where he directed his car onto the onetime playground behind the school. Old men and women were wandering about over the tarmac surface. Because the number of children in the parish had dropped, the school had been turned into a gathering place for the elderly of the parish. They got out of the car, and at the sound of the doors closing, old people whose hearing was not impaired turned to stare at them. Tuttle doffed his tweed hat, took Pasquali's arm, and led him along the walk to the rectory. He went up the stairs to the kitchen door, Pasquali at his side, and knocked. He was about to knock again when the door opened.

“That's her!” Pasquali cried.

Mrs. Murkin looked at Pasquali and then at Tuttle. “What is this?”

“Do you recognize this man?”

“What has he done?”

“He's been praying a novena in the church here.”

Marie Murkin had come out on the porch and was circling Pasquali. It was obvious to Tuttle that she remembered him. Marie nodded. “Yes, I've seen him in church.”

Pasquali grabbed her hands and began kissing them. Marie danced away, flustered, but not really minding it. Tuttle had half a mind to kiss her himself.

Father Dowling heard the commotion on the back porch and put down the
Purgatorio.
At this hour of the day, when he wasn't reading Dante, he was reading Thomas Aquinas. The back door opened, there were voices in the hallway, and then Marie ushered in Tuttle and a man Father Dowling recognized from the photo that had run in the
Tribune.

“Mrs. Murkin is Mr. Pasquali's alibi,” Tuttle said triumphantly.

Father Dowling listened to Tuttle's account of the matter, with Pasquali nodding vigorously through the narrative. “The power of prayer,” the priest murmured with a smile.

“He was praying that Gloria Daley would love him,” Tuttle explained.

Marie lifted her shoulders, made a sound, and was about to leave.

“Is all this true, Marie?” Roger Dowling asked.

“Of course it's true.”

“Then you are indeed Mr. Pasquali's alibi.”

Half an hour later, when Tuttle and his client had left, Marie came in to him. “He kissed my hands when I recognized him.”

“Regular confessions are on Saturday afternoon.”

“He'll be lucky if his prayers aren't answered. Gloria Daley is the woman Ned Bunting was coming here to Mass with. I know all about her from Barbara Blaisdel at St. Bavo's.”

“Don't be a sore loser, Marie.”

When Phil Keegan came over that evening, Father Dowling told him what had happened.

“Oh, I heard. Tuttle has been spreading it all around the courthouse. Jacuzzi is blaming our investigation for not turning this up.”

“Will charges be dropped?”

“If Tuttle stops crowing. Jacuzzi thought we had Pasquali nailed.”

“So who killed Ned Bunting?”

Phil puffed on his cigar. Then, studying the books at his side, he said, “Agnes Lamb has a theory.”

“What is it?”

“I hate theories. With Pasquali, it wasn't just a theory. The guy had fought with Bunting. They were apparently interested in the same woman.”

“Gloria Daley.”

“A real yo-yo.”

“Meaning?”

“She's well into her fifties, maybe more, and she acts like a teenager. She paints.”

“Her face?”

“Pictures. Watercolors. Oils. She's a factory. Apparently she has a house full of them. Pasquali has some of them hung in his branch library. That was the connection with Bunting, art.”

“Ah.”

“According to Cy, she giggles when she talks about Pasquali and Bunting. Like a girl. She's got the attention span of a fruit fly. She's the one who convinced Madeline Murphy that Gregory Barrett had taken advantage of her and was the father of her child.”

“Which she no longer says.”

“Now she's mad at the Daley woman for getting her into such a mess.”

One of the effects of Tetzel's big story and its sheepish retraction was to make all accusations against priests seem manufactured. Barfield had been interviewed on television and came close to saying this, with the result that the archdiocesan settlement with a group of victims was suddenly in trouble. At least for Gregory Barrett, the results seemed just. His reaction in Amos Cadbury's office when he was told of the test poor Tetzel had broadcast to the world had convinced Roger Dowling that his old classmate was indeed a victim.