(2012) Cross-Border Murder (14 page)

“More or less.”

“More or less?”

“She works for the Catholic diocese there. But the funds are so scarce, that it’s a far cry from the work she wanted to do.”

I had not thought of Gina as having any religious affiliation. I mentioned that fact.

She shrugged, “I was baptized Catholic. But It’s not an institution I respect. I don’t consider myself a part of it anymore. A religion which discriminates against women is irrelevant.” There was no anger just indifference in her voice.

“And your mother?”

“We share some of the same views. But my mother,” she said with a note of puzzled frustration, “is willing to wait a thousand years for the Church to change. We’ve agreed to disagree.”

“And if the church changes its attitude towards women?”

“And allows women to become priests, bishops, cardinals and even popes?”

“Yes,” I remarked, even though I felt I had suddenly stepped into never-never land.

She laughed, “if it happens before I die, I’ll think about it then. Access to decision-making on an equal footing,” she added, “that’s the real issue. Empowerment. The fact that the Catholic Church has a reactionary policy slows down the progress of equity almost everywhere.” She spoke as if she understood the world of geopolitics. A product of CNN and modern television, I thought.

“I once read a book,” I said, pausing to negotiate a narrow bridge which was under repair, “written by an Anglican clergyman.” She gave me a puzzled look. “He was speculating about the dying condition of his bishop. His bishop was in the last throes of brain cancer, totally dependent upon those around him to perform even the simplest of human tasks. And he was led to ponder whether the bishop in that condition was in any way less human than he had been 10 years ago at the height of his episcopal powers.” I paused, wondering whether I was boring her.

“And?” She asked. “what conclusion did he come to?”

“That he was not only as fully human, but that dependent, incapacitated, and dying, maybe he was at the height of his empowerment.”

Gina gave me a guarded look as if she suspected that I had set some kind of ideological trap. In a way I had.

“Most people would not agree. I don’t.” She said.

“I know,” I said. “but it was the spiritual argument he used to arrive at his conclusion that I found most interesting.”

“Oh?” She was staring out the side window, as if by so doing she was succeeding in putting some intellectual distance between us. “And what was that?”

“He based it on an interpretation of Christ’s life. You see he divided Christ’s life into two parts: his healthy, active ministry of preaching the gospel, and his passive ministry of being a willing scapegoat, clinging to the cross, seemingly as helpless and dependent as the writer’s bishop. This Anglican priest argued that Christ’s self-chosen passive ministry was certainly of equal importance, perhaps even more important than his active ministry of preaching the language of salvation. In other words, Christ was obviously as fully human hanging as a speared animal on the cross as he had been when he was healthy preaching the Sermon from the Mount. Otherwise the message of salvation through crucifixion in Christianity has no meaning. And hence, this Anglican priest argued, what was true of Christ must also be true of his bishop who lay dependent, disempowered, drooling on his deathbed.” I looked over but she was still staring out the side window. “Of course, if one accepts his argument it changes one’s attitude towards the very idea of people and empowerment. We may pretend otherwise, but we live our lives as if the truly human person ought to be healthy, intelligent, talented, well-educated, influential and powerful. In our eyes, anything downscale from that is not quite as fully or satisfactorily human. Our often shabby, condescending treatment of the elderly, the handicapped, the mentally ill, even those with below average I.Q.’s flows inevitably from that assumption.”

Gina continued to stare out the window at the passing landscape. We were passing a spot which afforded a brief glimpse of a lake in the distance. She sighed, “it’s an interpretation which has no relevance to the world I live in. In fact, I don’t even find it particularly interesting.” From her tone of voice I realized that my long digression had begun to bore her. But I had one more arrow in my quiver and I decided to shoot it into the air and let it do its work.

“It’s the immediate philosophical and social implications which interest me,” I said, “for example, is O.J. Simpson more meaningful to society, and therefore more fully human than, say, your father was?” She turned to look at me. I had her attention again, if only briefly. “After all, Simpson had more money, and consequently more power, and therefore he got the court trial of the century. It’s not exactly a coincidence that society spent millions on his trial. But to society your father and Professor Monaghan were of minor significance. Only a minimal amount of official resources were employed. And in the end officialdom brushed it all aside as if it was of no great importance. I guess we have to conclude that O.J. Simpson, talented athlete, multimillionaire, TV and movie star, symbol of black male empowerment was, in society’s view, more fully human than your father who, after all, was only a modest, professor of history at some backwater university.”

I sensed her anger. I glanced over. She sat there silent, lips pursed, determined to say nothing. I had shot my arrow and it had landed somewhere in the complicated maze of Gina’s social mindset. She took a deep breath and let it out in a prolonged sigh. Her anger finally dissipated.

“So what has all this to do with equity, and the right of women to be priests? Which, if my memory is correct, is how we started this strange conversation.”

“Oh, only that everyone’s desire for empowerment, to bask in the power of O.J. Simpson or the Pope, or even the priesthood, is a goal that is suspect because it demeans everyone who doesn’t manage to wriggle their way to a share of that power. All this talk of empowerment makes us forget that a movie-goer is as fully human as Spielberg, that your father was as fully human as O.J. Simpson, and that the lowest member of the Church is as fully human as the Pope. We all put our socks on the same way, and what is truly important is that we should all be accepted as fully human at all times, especially when we are at our weakest and most dependent.”

She shrugged. “I don’t disagree with that. Except for the fact that it’s a view of life that has been too often used to deny people a right to control their own lives. You’re truly human, the Pope tells us women, but let us males decide what’s right and wrong for you. I won’t buy that. For the rest let’s just say we agree to disagree.”

“Fair enough.”

“And you,” she asked, “are you religious?”

I shook my head. “Too much abuse of empowerment in all religions for me to be in good standing with any of them.”

We had come to the outskirts of Portland. I stopped the car and let her take over since she was familiar with the route to her mother’s house. Five minutes later we had to stop for a red light.

“And what do you do when you’re not pursuing justice for your father?” I asked her.

She answered me in a clipped voice. I think she was still upset at the condescending way I had referred to her father. “I work for a company that specializes in the graphic arts. I help design logos, labels and packaging that communicate simply and effectively whatever message our clients hope to convey.” Perhaps because it sounded a little too much like a branch of the exploitative advertising business, she added, “I do a lot of posters for theater companies, art groups, charitable campaigns, that sort of thing as well. But business is slow right now, so they didn’t object to my taking an extended leave of absence without pay to try to make amends to my father’s memory.” The way she stressed the last sentence seemed to me intended to remind me that her present mission was fundamentally virtuous. Certainly fully human.

We were approaching a large mall. “Should we pick up some wine or something to bring to your mother?”

She nodded and pulled into the mall. I bought an expensive set of boxed French wines. One white, one red.

By seven o’clock that evening I had met her mother, we had eaten a meal of veal escalope, and had drunk the bottle of white wine. In appearance, her mother reminded me a little of Marcia Clark, the lead prosecuting attorney in the O.J. Simpson case. The hair styling was similar, dark with an abundance of curls which seemed on the verge of becoming ringlets if left unattended. The eyes were similar as well, liquid, limpid, doe-like, the skin, pale, the mouth and chin feminine and sensual, but capable on short notice of becoming as firm and determined as the terrier my parents had owned before they died.

I had been shown to the spare bedroom shortly after our arrival. Sensing that Gina and her mother wanted a chance to talk privately, I took them up on the offer to rest for an hour before dinner. At first I could not sleep. I could hear murmurs of conversation down the hall. Finally, I did manage to doze for about twenty minutes, but my nerves did not allow for more. I got up, unpacked, and went to the window. The house was in an older residential part of Cape Elizabeth. It was on a winding street, with a dense, wooded area behind the house. An ideal location for a sniper. Particularly at night. With the lights on, someone in the woods would have a clear view of the kitchen, dining room, and portions of the upstairs bedrooms. I wondered if we were any safer here than we had been at my house.

After dinner, we took our coffees into the living room. Gina’s mother offered me a cognac. I accepted gratefully. But I noticed that neither Gina nor her mother joined me. With a smile, Gina’s mother placed an ashtray next to my armchair. I lit up. It was only my first cigarette of the day. I was doing pretty well. Last year I had gone from two packs a day down to one. A few months ago I had got it down to the occasional cigarette every now and then.

“Perhaps you know,” I asked Mary Montini, “whether the Monaghan’s had the cottage near Owl’s head mountain before professor Monaghan was murdered?”

She gave me a surprised look. “Yes. They did. But then surely you knew that?”

“I did?” I lifted my eyebrows. I tried to smile, but I think I only succeeded in looking slightly foolish.

“The enlarged photograph I gave Gina. It was taken at the cottage. I did tell you that, Gina, didn’t I?”

Gina frowned. She obviously did not remember. I thought of Captain Leclair going to the trouble, at Phil Ryan’s request, of having someone check through the local deed office.

“Since you’ve been in the place,” I said to Mary, “did you by any chance notice whether the Monaghan’s had a telescope at the cottage?”

Again she gave me a surprised look. “Yes, they had a very good one, but why do you ask?”

I explained about the proximity of the cottage to Bull’s project, and my speculation that Monaghan may have wanted to observe what was happening there.

“I suppose,” she said, a puzzled look on her face, “but the telescope was Naomi’s.”

“Naomi’s?”

“Yes. She was a very good photographer.” I glanced at Gina. I felt a strange insight buzzing at the back of my mind but I could not capture it. Mary Montini continued. “There was a place on the telescope where she could mount a camera with a telescopic lens. She would take photographs of deer in the distant hills, or of interesting compositions of the mountains with the mist and clouds hovering around their peaks. She even had some startling sky shots. It was a good place for looking at stars. I remember one shot, in particular, of a part of the moon and its craters. It was really quite spectacular.”

It was getting late and Gina, who had not had the opportunity to doze upon arrival as I had, decided to go to bed.

“There’s still some coffee,” Mary Montini said.

I glanced at my watch. It was almost ten o’clock.

“I don’t usually go to bed until 10:30,” she said.

I think we both knew that we needed a chance to talk without Gina being around. While she was getting the coffee, I settled back and lit another cigarette. I have been in homes where I have constantly been on edge. Homes where I felt my presence could only disturb the Homes and Gardens perfection the owners had spent so much effort to achieve. Mary Montini’s home was not like that: oh, it was clean and orderly, but the tell-tale signs of normal human occupancy were there without too much effort being made to hide them. A fireplace tile needed grouting. A slight trace of a spill on one of the coffee tables had been cleaned and polished, but the table had not been sent out to be refinished. The hardwood floor between the carpet in the living room and the one in the dining room showed the wear and tear of constant traffic.

When she returned with the coffee, I asked her to give me her impressions of the members of the close-knit group to which she had belonged at Winston University, starting with the Symanskys.

She nodded. We both knew that this was something that we had to do, and that it would not be easy. She stared at her unlit fireplace. “What I remember most about them is their charm. They seemed to be a perfect couple. They had the kind of social polish and ease that most other people envy. And yet I never got close to them. There are some people you meet that you feel you want to keep in touch with, even if it’s only through a yearly exchange of Christmas cards. I never felt that kind of feeling about the Symanskys. They kind of floated in and out of my life leaving behind only this impression of polish and charm. Like a politician who remembers your name, gives you a smile and a peck on the cheek and then is gone. Odd, isn’t it, but when Gina told me they had spied on some of us, it didn’t come as all that much of a surprise. I guess I must have sensed that their charm was only skin deep. No, that’s not quite right. Their charm was natural enough. Maybe it had started out as a kind of facade and had become a real part of them. There’s a professional actor I know,” she said. She turned her doe-like eyes on me and seemed to be sizing me up. She couldn’t be wondering whether my charm was a facade. I didn’t have any, or at least not the kind that is worth noting. She looked away. “The minute my friend leaves his front door he’s on stage. He’s witty, charming, delightful, a consummate companion. But there never seems to be an unguarded moment. I’ve always suspected that when he returns home, and closes the front door, and lets his hair down, a totally different person emerges.” She allowed herself a flirtatious smile. “I suppose one would have to go to bed with him to find out.”