True Confessions (12 page)

The call was making him feel immensely better. For the first time that morning, he was beginning to enjoy himself.

“Thanks, Tommy,” Desmond Spellacy said after a moment.

“Think nothing of it, Des.”

“I’ve been meaning to call you anyway. There’s a couple of things I’d like to talk to you about. You free for lunch?”

If he wants to have lunch, Tom Spellacy thought, it isn’t because he forgot to say Happy Easter. Or because he thinks he owes me. He wondered what his brother had on his mind. “Dinner’s better.”

“No, I’ve got to go to Camp Roberts this afternoon.”

For his National Guard training, Tom Spellacy supposed. Desmond Spellacy had been an army chaplain during the war, and because the Cardinal was vicar general of the armed forces, he was still active in the reserves.

“You’re going to be Captain Spellacy this weekend.”

“Major Spellacy.”

“You’ve been promoted, then. You got every right to show a little pride. You must’ve been doing a swell job in plenary indulgences. Or getting the boys to fill their mite boxes.”

Desmond Spellacy did not reply.

“The Parachuting Padre,” Tom Spellacy said. That was how Dan T. Campion always introduced Des at all those Notre Dame alumni dinners and insurance-industry Catholic-of-the-Week banquets he attended. Because Des had been a paratrooper.

“Are you free for lunch or not?” Desmond Spellacy said with a flash of irritation.

“Oh, I am, Des, I am. Especially if you’re going to wear your soldier suit. I like to look at all those pretty ribbons.”

“One o’clock then. At the Biltmore.” There was an edge in his voice, as if Desmond Spellacy already regretted the invitation.

“Don’t forget to tell Sister Margaret I’ll be her son’s godfather.”

His Eminence Hugh Cardinal Danaher was in a foul mood
.The temper began long before his conversation with Monsignor Spellacy. For nearly sixty years the Cardinal had said mass at five A.M., and for nearly sixty years he had hated it. It was a daily mortification that had never become a habit. The rattle of the alarm at four-thirty. The fetid taste in his mouth. He never brushed his teeth for fear he would swallow some water and break his fast. The altar boys. He often wondered if other princes of the Church detested altar boys as much as he did at five in the morning. Always telling him they were going to, the seminary and then going out to work in the missions of China. Or pouring too much wine in his chalice, as if all he wanted first thing in the morning was a stiff wake-me-up. Or else avoiding his eyes when they didn’t receive, as if his only concern was the mortal sin committed under the blankets the night before.

Always while saying mass, the Cardinal went over in his mind the agenda for the upcoming day. He was a methodical man and he hated surprises. Problems existed to be anticipated. It was a basic rule. One that Monsignor Spellacy appreciated. Perhaps too well. It often occurred to the Cardinal that in the ten years Monsignor Spellacy had been his chancellor, he had never once called him Desmond. Monsignor Spellacy liked to deal with problems.

Problem: the threatened strike of the lay teachers in the parochial schools for higher wages.

Monsignor Spellacy’s solution: threaten to import teaching nuns from Ireland.

Problem: Brendan Keenan, the pastor at Saint Robert’s.

Father Keenan had never been one of the Cardinal’s favorites. Especially since his discovery of Boys Town. Every time a youngster at Saint Robert’s stole a pencil, Father Keenan wanted to send him to Boys Town. “Let Father Flanagan shape him up,” Brendan Keenan liked to say. He thinks Boys Town is where you send Mickey Rooney to learn how to milk a cow, the Cardinal thought. Now there were reports about Brendan Keenan. He had taken to weeping in the confessional. But only with women penitents. Telling them how lonely it was being a priest. All the things he was missing. The little dinners. The mistletoe at Christmas. The last straw was asking Agnes McNulty for a date. In confession. A tennis date. Agnes McNulty with her eleven children. Six nuns and five priests was the way she always described her brood. The Cardinal tried to imagine Agnes McNulty in tennis whites.

Monsignor Spellacy’s solution: the CYO needed a new sports director.

Just the thing for Brendan Keenan, the Cardinal thought. A Boys Town all his own. Where he could spend the rest of his priesthood dedicating new ball diamonds and assigning umpires to CYO league games. And in his dotage, be made a papal chamberlain for his services to the youth of the archdiocese.

Problem: Monsignor Gagnon.

Monsignor Spellacy had told him after breakfast. It always gave the Cardinal a start to see Monsignor Spellacy in his uniform. With the neat row of ribbons on his chest topped by the paratrooper’s badge. The Parachuting Padre. He was glad he had insisted that the monsignor remain in the reserves. The National Guard was like a touch of parish training, allowing Monsignor Spellacy to brush up against human problems. A little humanity was the only thing the monsignor seemed deficient in.

The Cardinal bestirred himself. He knew his mind was wandering. It was what he hated most about growing old.

Monsignor Gagnon. That was a problem the Cardinal had not anticipated. And the reason he was still in such a bad mood. That damn fool. In a way the Cardinal blamed himself. He should have known there was something amiss. He kept his ears open to every nuance in the archdiocese. But there had never been a whisper about Mickey Gagnon. No family problems, no other signs of stress that might have led him astray. He wondered how long it had been going on. A long time, he imagined. From what Monsignor Spellacy had implied, it was not the sort of place one just stumbled on.

He hoped Mickey had been in a state of grace.

It was an assumption he was prepared to make.

Monsignor Spellacy had been so discreet. He had never mentioned his brother by name when he told the Cardinal about Mickey Gagnon. “A friend in the department,” was the way he put it. The Cardinal had never met Lieutenant Spellacy. Not that he was unaware of services rendered. On many occasions. One thing the Cardinal knew about policemen: they accepted as a given the taint on the human condition. The true Calvinists. Monsignor Spellacy was that way, too. Hardly a virtue in a priest. But a flaw I share myself, the Cardinal thought. Perhaps it was the only way to get the job done.

The drone of Augustine O’Dea’s conversation interrupted the Cardinal’s thoughts. The vicar general sat across from the Cardinal’s desk as he did every morning, detailing what he had done yesterday and what he was going to do today. Monsignor Spellacy sat beside him, as always during this daily recitation of events, impassive. He looked uncomfortable in his uniform.

“Poor Mickey,” Augustine O’Dea said. “I bet I know what he was doing at the May Company, Your Eminence.”

The Cardinal started. “And what would that be, Augustine?”

“He was a grand fisherman, Mickey,” the vicar general said. “Always out in Charley Dunn’s boat, he was. Judge Dunn. The undertaker’s brother.
The Other Half
.”

“The other half of what, Augustine?”

“That’s Charley’s boat,
The Other Half”
Augustine O’Dea said. “He had all the tackle.”

“Charley?” the Cardinal said hesitantly.

“Mickey,” Augustine O’Dea said.

“I didn’t know that,” the Cardinal said.

“If he was at the May Company,” Augustine O’Dea said, “I bet they were having a sale on poles. I bet you can check that out, Des, before you go off on your soldier training.”

“A sound idea, Bishop,” Desmond Spellacy said. “Very sound.”

“For the eulogy,” Augustine O’Dea said. “With the Twelve Apostles being fishermen and all, it would be a nice point for the eulogy, if Mickey was buying a pole.”

The Cardinal abruptly changed the subject. “Tell me, Augustine, how did the Holy Name Society luncheon go yesterday?”

“I heard the grandest story from Lourdes, Your Emk nence . . .”

“I could do with a miracle today, Augustine.”

“Jack Costello told me.”

“Do I know Jack Costello?”

“The famous Coca-Cola bottler.”

“Ah, yes,” the Cardinal said.

“He got that freezer wholesale for Saint Agnes’s Home.”

“Ah, yes.”

“His sister-in-law, Theresa Curtin. Hasn’t walked a step in twenty-five years. Legs as crippled as a Communist’s mind.”

“A felicitous analogy.”

“She goes to Lourdes with that bunch from Saint Lawrence O’Toole’s, dips her legs in . . .”

“And now I suppose she’s doing the polka,” the Cardinal said.

The vicar general beamed. “At Cas Stasiak’s reception for his boy’s confirmation.”

“It’s right out of
The Song of Bernadette,”
the Cardinal said.

“A grand movie, Your Eminence. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen it.”

“Eleven,” Desmond Spellacy said.

“At least,” Augustine O’Dea said. He paused for a moment. “This Jennifer Jones. Is she a Catholic girl?”

“I believe she is under contract to David Selznick,” the Cardinal said.

The vicar general laid out his schedule for the rest of the day. Confirmation at Saint Bernard’s. Lunch with the Legion of Decency. The dedication of the new wing at Saint Jude’s Hospital. The invocation at a symposium of Catholic college athletic letter-men. Dinner with the Sons of Saint Stephen the Bulgar. The Cardinal was certain that at each event, the vicar general would pick up some new testament to the glory of God. The Miracle Wireless, the Cardinal called it. And the reason Augustine O’Dea was such a source of comfort to Hugh Danaher. The vicar general could make any problem seem trivial. Even Monsignor Gagnon’s unfortunate end seemed not only palatable but even ludicrous.

When Augustine O’Dea had departed, the Cardinal said to Desmond Spellacy, “Did your brother mention a sale on fishing poles?”

“No, Your Eminence.”

The Cardinal noted that it did not seem to surprise Desmond Spellacy that he knew who his “friend in the department” was.

“Perhaps Augustine should give the eulogy,” the Cardinal said. “I’m sure he can work in a reference to The Big Fisherman.”

“Yes, Your Eminence.” Desmond Spellacy balanced a clipboard on his knee. The Cardinal’s ill-humor seemed to be fading. The vicar general always seemed to have that effect on him. Perhaps that was why the Cardinal kept him around.

The Cardinal eyed the clipboard with distaste. “What have you got?”

“First, a possible candidate for the Cardinal’s Scholarship. If Your Eminence agrees, you can announce it at the Policemen’s Ball.”

The Cardinal nodded.

“A student, altar boy, athlete, father a patrolman shot during a holdup—”

The Cardinal waved his hand impatiently. “Name.”

“Antonio Biscailuz.”

“Good,” the Cardinal said. And smart, too, he thought. There had been complaints for some time now that the chancery took the Mexican-American quarter of the archdiocese too much for granted. Very smooth. The Mexicans and the department placated in one stroke. You had to hand it to Monsignor Spellacy. “Next.”

“The new nurses’ home at Saint John Bosco Hospital.”

“What about it?”

“I thought I’d ask Neddy Flynn and Emmett Flaherty to bid on the construction contract.”

The Cardinal nodded. “Fine.”

So he’s finally wised up to Mr. Amsterdam, the Cardinal thought. He must have heard about the ton of sand. And God knows what else. Let Monsignor Spellacy get rid of him himself. And good riddance. “Next.”

“I’ve been thinking of Supervisor McDonough as a possible replacement for Chet Hanrahan.”

Another sharp harp, the Cardinal thought. But not as smart as Monsignor Spellacy. Maybe not a bad idea. Let it sit for a while. “Keep me posted.”

“Of course,” Desmond Spellacy said. Their dialogue was ritual, a search for meanings among the monosyllables. Like smoke blown into the wind, it left no traces if the interpretation was wrong. “Keep me posted” translated into “proceed with caution.” He checked the clipboard. “I had the appraiser look at Mabel Higgins’s Vermeer.”

The Cardinal shuddered. Mabel Higgins was a cross he had to bear. She gave twenty thousand a year to archdiocesan charities. On top of the crisp, new hundred-dollar bill in the collection envelope every Sunday at Saint Vibiana’s. “The cancer people are always after me, Your Eminence.” Always there was the charity panting to get Mabel Higgins’s money. “And there’s this grand new one now, multiple sclerosis. The crippler of young adults, they call it. A grand cause. Not that I don’t tell them all, ‘His Eminence comes first.’” In other words, the archdiocese might get some of her fortune if the Cardinal listened when she pestered him about the possible beatification of Lucille Gorman. A hundred years dead, Lucille Gorman, mother of sixteen children, and then after Mr. Gorman passed to his eternal reward, she had received special dispensation to join the Sisters of Charity. Sister Gorman, she was called in the convent. “California needs a saint, Your Eminence,” Mabel Higgins reminded him constantly. “One of our own is what I mean. Not a Mexican, saintly though they may be.” The Cardinal had done some checking on Sister Gorman. Mabel Higgins’s great-grandaunt by marriage, it turned out. A fact Mabel Higgins had neglected to mention. And Sister Gorman had died of diarrhea not six months after she joined the convent. Apparently convent food did not agree with her. He would like to tell that to Mabel Higgins. Montezuma’s revenge, as it were.

“What is it worth?” the Cardinal said. Mabel Higgins had taken to donating the odd painting or piece of sculpture to the archdiocese. When cash was what the Cardinal would rather have.

“It’s a fake,” Desmond Spellacy said.

“Worthless?”

“Except for the frame.”

The Cardinal buried his face in his hands for a moment. “If we say it’s worthless, we’ll have a lawsuit on our hands. She’s a most litigious woman. She sued her plumber last year.”

“We let an art scholar see it, he’ll probably say it was painted by that plumber.”

The Cardinal sighed. “The appraiser—any possibility he made a mistake?”

Desmond Spellacy shook his head. “Jack Tobin. The best on the coast. His sister’s a nun. A plus for us.”

“We can’t hide the painting, not under the terms of the gift. And if we do hang it, the art scholars will hang us.”

The grandfather’s clock in the Cardinal’s study struck the hour.

“I have a suggestion,” Desmond Spellacy said when the chimes finished. “The new Felician convent. Suppose you decided to hang it there.”

The Cardinal drummed his fingers on his desk and stared at Desmond Spellacy. The chancellor’s face was impassive. He could run General Motors, the Cardinal thought. An Irish Medici, that one. Perhaps that’s the problem, perhaps I’ve taught him too well. “A cloistered order,” he said finally.

“The only man allowed inside is a priest giving the last rites.”

“I don’t suppose the Sisters of Saint Felix would know it was a ... reproduction,” the Cardinal said.