Dead Wrong (27 page)

That, in those days when it was a seller’s market, was an extremely thoughtful gesture on the part of the pastor—far, far better than the treatment accorded one of Koesler’s classmates, whose pastor regularly ate steak while his assistant was served hot dogs.

Despite the preparatory seminary’s insistence on submissiveness to one’s pastor, mortal flesh can absorb only so much harassment no matter how inadvertent it might be. So, one day, the assistant stated he would no longer tolerate such manifest second class treatment. The pastor, in his own way, agreed: Henceforth, the pastor dined on his steak while the assistant continued to be fed hot dogs—but they ate at different times.

Such was the state of the Church in those days.

Koesler felt fortunate indeed.

Father Pompilio cut a tiny portion off the minuscule fish. He put the knife aside, stabbed the small bite, squeezed a bit of lemon juice on it, dabbed it in the tartar sauce, put it in his mouth, and laid the fork on his plate while he proceeded to chew the morsel. This routine would be observed, in agonizing repetition, for the length of the meal.

Koesler, nearly done with his supper, thought he might go mad.

“Say,” Pompilio said, “I heard a good one today. Seasonal too.”

Farmer grinned. “Let’s have it.”

“Seems that”—some people are described as having an ear-to-ear grin; Pompilio had it almost literally—“a Dominican and a Jesuit priest died and went to heaven—”

“This has got to be fiction,” Farmer interrupted. “They don’t let those guys into heaven now, do they?”

“C’mon, Joe, let me finish.” Pompilio cut an infinitesimal piece of smelt. “Anyway, St. Peter asked them what, in all of history, they wanted to see. They talked it over and finally agreed that they wanted to see the original Christmas, the way it really was.

“Well, sir, they got whisked off and there they were, right there at the original, authentic Christmas—Mary and Joseph and the baby and the shepherds and the animals.

“Well, sir, the two priests fell down on their knees in adoration. And that’s where they stayed for a good long time.” He laid the lemon slice down and dipped the morsel in the tartar sauce.

Koesler, having finished both steak and potatoes, lit a cigarette.

“Finally,” Pompilio said, “the Jesuit got up and went over to St. Joseph, and tugged at his sleeve. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he says, ‘but have you given any thought to the child’s education?’”

Koesler chuckled. Farmer laughed generously. Pompilio chewed on the current morsel with great and evident satisfaction.

“That’s pretty good, Pomps,” Farmer said. “It reminds me of another Christmas one.”

“Yeah, Joe, yeah.” Pompilio, knife and fork both resting on his plate, was not even sawing off another bite of fish.

Koesler decided he would try not to count the mounting number of cigarette butts in the ashtray. It was too discouraging, what with his trying to cut back. Since the housekeeper apparently was not going to empty the ashtray until it overflowed, Koesler decided to take the drastic step of emptying it himself.

“The way I heard it…” Farmer began to chuckle.

Koesler decided to concentrate on Farmer’s story. Toward the end of every joke he told, he had the tendency to break himself up. In a way, it enhanced the humor. It also made it nearly impossible to make much sense of the punch line.

“The way I heard it,” Farmer repeated, “the Holy Family was in the stable with the animals and the shepherds. And Joseph was standing there with his brow all furrowed. Mary asked, ‘What’s wrong, Joseph?’

“And Joseph said, ‘I was just thinking. I was trying to think of a name for the baby’ Just then, the three wise men arrived. Well, the last of the three, Melchior, was very tall, and when he entered the stable, he banged his head on the low door frame. He rubbed his head and mumbled, ‘Jesus!’ And St. Joseph said…” Farmer began to laugh so hard Koesler feared he might be choking on a morsel of food. But he was just convulsed with his own punch line.

“And St. Joseph said, ‘That’s it!’” he finally concluded, between gasps of laughter.

“What? What did he say, Joe? What did he say?”

“That’s it!’ ‘That’s it!’”

Even Koesler thought it funny… sort of blasphemy in reverse.

The laughter subsided. Farmer finished eating. Pompilio cut off another slice of the microscopic fish. Koesler stubbed out his smoldering cigarette and wondered if Pompilio had discovered the secret of multiplying fishes. “By the way,” Koesler said, “while we’re all over the subject of Christmas, have you seen what the choir is getting up for the carols before Midnight Mass?”

“No, I haven’t caught that. What’s going on?” Pompilio dipped the fish fragment in the tartar sauce, put it carefully in his mouth, placed the knife and fork on his plate, and recommenced his contented chewing.

Farmer spoke from an abundance of unassimilated experience. “What could be different about that? You heard a few Christmas carols, you heard ’em all.”

“It’s not the carols,” Koesler said, “it’s the staging.”

“Staging?” Pompilio repeated.

“The way the organist has it set up,” Koesler said, “he has spotlights all over the church, and he’s getting them programmed to light up what he thinks is an appropriate picture or statue to go along with each carol.”

“I’m not sure…” Pompilio fumbled. “The ‘appropriate statue’?”

“For instance,” Koesler explained, “when the choir sings ‘Away in a Manger,’ the spotlight illuminates the manger scene that’s mounted on the Communion railing.”

“That sounds pretty good to me.” Pompilio sipped from his glass of white wine.

“Yeah, it does,” Koesler seemed to agree, “but we don’t always have an appropriate painting or statue.”

However, the interior of St. Ursula’s church came close to having a representation of nearly every saint imaginable. It was an iconoclast’s dream come true.

Apparently with this in mind, Pompilio asked, “Who don’t we have?”

“Well, for one, the Archangel Gabriel. When the choir sings the ‘Ave Maria,’ the organist wants to shine the spot on Gabriel—who announced to Mary she’s going to be the mother of Jesus. After all, half the words of the ‘Ave Maria’ are Gabriel’s.”

“So we don’t have Gabriel,” Pompilio said. “Who does he shine the light on?”

“Michael,” Koesler answered. “He’s the only archangel we’ve got.”

Farmer, trading on his former statement, said, “You seen one archangel, you seen ’em all.”

“Not quite,” Koesler responded. “While the choir sings the words of the gentle angel who humbly asks Mary if she will consent to be the Mother of God, the spotlight reveals an archangel in battle gear, with his foot crushing the serpent-devil and his arm raised to strike the serpent with a huge sword.”

Neither Pompilio nor Farmer seemed to find this tableau either humorous or ridiculous. “You seen one archangel, you seen ‘em all,” Farmer repeated.

“They’ll never notice,” Pompilio promised.

Koesler did not wish the congregation’s Christmas piety to be punctured. But he did hope they
would
notice.

Later, as Christmas Midnight Mass neared, Koesler would, somewhat sadly, come to agree with both Farmer and Pompilio.

The pastor gave every indication that he had finished dinner. There were no more little smelt to be found anywhere. Until he saw it with his own eyes, Koesler had given serious consideration to the possibility that the fish really weren’t dead: that they were propagating faster than rabbits and that forever—morning, noon, and night—there would be smelt in the serving dish and Pomps would be eating them into eternity.

Pompilio rang the little silver bell. Sophie entered, cleared away the dishes, returned with coffee and cookies, glanced at the overflowing ashtray, and left the room.

Koesler lit another cigarette. What would coffee be without a cigarette?

“Would you like me to take that funeral tomorrow morning?” Farmer asked.

“No!” Pompilio said emphatically. Then, more softly, “No.”

Koesler smiled inwardly. There was some chemistry going on here. His pastor was not the most secure person Koesler had ever known. Pompilio had difficulty believing that everyone, including himself, recognized that he was, indeed, the pastor of this place.

There would be a funeral at St. Ursula’s tomorrow morning. This funeral was out of the ordinary in that the deceased was a murder victim. Agnes Ventimiglia was to be buried from St. Ursula’s because her parents were parishioners, at least nominally.

Everyone who knew Pompilio—as Farmer certainly did—knew that his self-confidence was flimsy. An occasion such as tomorrow’s funeral, which undoubtedly would be turned into a media event, was a rare and signal moment to make one thing perfectly clear: that he, Father Robert Pompilio, was definitely in charge.

Farmer must have been joking, thought Koesler, in offering to take the funeral. The two old buddies did that sort of thing between themselves with some frequency, Farmer more so than Pompilio.

“She was a graduate of our school, wasn’t she?” Koesler asked.

“Yes …” Pompilio sighed. “She graduated before my time—my time as pastor, that is.”

Pompilio had been an assistant at St. Ursula’s years earlier under a most severe and uncompromising pastor. That might have been part of his problem—trading the image of subservient assistant for the role of pastor.

“What do you think happened to her?” Pompilio threw out the question for general comment. “Who do you think did this to her?”

Joe Farmer dunked his cookie in his coffee. Koesler concentrated on the smoke curling from his cigarette. He hated to watch dunkers. The process was so messy.

To date, the police had released only the information that the body of a young white woman had been found in the Detroit River; that she hadn’t drowned, she’d been bludgeoned to death; that she’d been killed on or about November 30; and that she’d been identified as Agnes Ventimiglia.

In a later item, not related to the investigation, the announcement of her funeral arrangements appeared in the paper.

It was definitely a media event.

Local news media—TV, radio, and the press—had been replete with statements and photos of the deceased’s friends, co-workers, neighbors, and, last but by no means least, her pastor.

The police had not mentioned the name Peter Arnold because the real Peter Arnold had amply proved that he’d had no knowledge of Agnes, let alone of the crime.

Farmer leaned forward, elbows on the table, and in a savant-soaked tone, said, “Personally, I think it was a boyfriend. Happens all the time nowadays. It’s the result of all this steady dating. Not good old-fashioned courtship like there used to be, with parental supervision and all. You hear confessions from young people that age and what are they doing? Necking, petting, fornication—what do they call it?—
making out.
Sin, mortal sin! And what do they care? One confession and it’s all wiped away; they can start all over again. The Ventimiglia girl and her boyfriend were probably making out and he got carried away and—”

“I think,” Koesler interrupted, “the paper said there was no evidence of sexual intercourse.”

“All the more,” Farmer insisted. “They probably went all the way any number of times. This time she said no. Probably got some grace and virtue from a confession and decided to have a chaste courtship or nothing. He got mad and killed her… whaddyou think, Pomps?”

Pompilio, sucking bits of fish or bone from between his teeth, did not immediately reply. Then, as if suddenly aware that the ball was in his court, he said, “I couldn’t disagree with you, Joe. But I think it goes back further than that. It’s the home.”

“There you have it,” Farmer agreed.

“Particularly the father,” Pompilio continued, running with the ball. “The Ventimiglia case is a good example. If it hadn’t been for the mother, the girl would never have gotten a parochial education. As it was, she had only half a Catholic upbringing. Her mother did the best she could. And God knows the sisters gave her good Christian teaching in school. That’s probably what made her say no to another mortal sin… like you said, Joe.”

“Damn right!” Farmer agreed with his own statement.

“But what can you do,” Pompilio pontificated, “when the father’s a pagan? Won’t go to church. Won’t make his Easter duty. What kind of example is that? And so, consequently, therefore”—a habitual phrase with Pompilio—“there is no unity in the home. The mother going God’s way while the father has no virtuous example to give.”

“What a hypocrite!” Farmer exclaimed. “Have you seen him on television? He makes out like he’s St. Francis of Assisi. And like he’s got nothing left to live for now that his darling daughter is gone. Makes out like she’s St. Maria Goretti who died rather than let someone have his way with her. Whereas she probably was steady-dating. And she had been taught in school how evil that was. Now she knows what we were trying to warn her about. Too late. Too late,” he ended in a melancholy tone.

“What do you think, Bob?” Father Pompilio did not want to suggest that he and his friend considered Koesler too young and inexperienced to contribute to this bull session. Which, in fact, they did.

“I don’t have the slightest idea, really,” Koesler confessed. “I’ve just been following the story in the papers. They’ve been giving it a lot of coverage.”

“You can’t believe what they print in the papers,” Farmer said. “Especially the Detroit papers. They’re anti-Catholic. Always were and always will be.”

“Tell you the truth,” Koesler replied, “I haven’t noticed that.”

“Why, my God, man!” Father Farmer quickly became testy. “Just read the letters to the editor they publish! They must run seven or eight to one against the Church.”

“I’ve never counted them.” Koesler now thought he might just do that in case Farmer ever made the charge again. “But I think Nelson Kane, Ed Breslin, and Herb Boldt are pretty darn good police reporters. Besides, all three of them are Catholic.”

“That doesn’t matter as long as they work for the godless
News
or
Free Press,”
Farmer stated.

“Still …” Koesler didn’t believe a word of it. “I think they do a good job, especially on this story. And if you follow them closely, they seem to agree in thinking this had something to do with the girl’s job. And that would have to have something to do with the records kept by the county clerk.”