Legion (4 page)

JOSEPH DYER, A JESUIT PRIEST, IRISH, forty–five years of age and a teacher of religion at Georgetown University, had started his Sunday with the Mass of Christ, refreshing his faith and renewing its mystery, celebrating hope in the life to come and praying for mercy on all mankind. After Mass he’d walked down to the Jesuit cemetery in the hollow of the campus grounds where he’d placed a few flowers in front of a tombstone marked
DAMIEN KARRAS, S.J
. Then he’d breakfasted heartily in the refectory, consuming gargantuan portions of everything: pancakes, pork chops, corn bread, sausages, bacon and eggs. He’d been sitting with the university president, Father Riley, a friend of many years.

“Joe, where do you put it?” marveled Riley, watching the diminutive, freckled redhead building a pork chop and pancake sandwich. Dyer turned his fey blue eyes on the president and said without expression, “Clean living,
mon pere
.” Then he reached for the milk and poured another glass.

Father Riley shook his head and sipped coffee, forgetting where he’d been in their discussion of Donne as a poet and a priest. “Any plans today, Joe? You’ll be around?”

“You want to show me your necktie collection or what?”

“I’ve got this speech for the American Bar Association next week. I’d like to kick it around.”

Riley watched with fascination as Dyer poured a lake of maple syrup on his plate.

“Yeah, I’ll be here until a quarter of two, and then I’ve got to see a movie with a friend. Lieutenant Kinderman. You’ve met him.”

“With the face like a beagle? The cop?”

Dyer nodded, stuffing his mouth.

“He’s an interesting guy,” observed the president.

“Every year on this day he gets down and depressed, so I have to cheer him up. He loves movies.”

“It’s today?”

Dyer nodded, his mouth full again.

The president sipped at his coffee. “I’d forgotten.”

Dyer and Kinderman met at the Biograph Cinema on M Street and saw almost half of The Maltese Falcon, a pleasure interrupted when a man in the audience sat down next to Kinderman, made some perceptive and appreciative comments concerning the film, which Kinderman welcomed, and then stared at the screen while placing a hand on Kinderman’s thigh, at which point Kinderman had turned to him, incredulous, breathing out, “Honest to God, I don’t believe you,” while snapping a handcuff around the man’s wrist. There ensued a slight commotion while Kinderman led the man to the lobby, called for a squad car and then packed him inside it.

“Just give him a scare and then let him go,” the lieutenant instructed the policeman driver.

The man poked his head through the back–seat window. “I’m a personal friend of Senator Klureman.”

“I’m sure he’ll be terribly sorry to hear that on the six o’clock news,” the detective responded. And then to the driver, “
Avanti
! Go!”

The squad car moved off. A small crowd had gathered. Kinderman looked around for Dyer and finally spotted him pressed in a doorway. He was looking up the street, and his hand held his coat lapels together at the throat so that the round Roman collar could not be seen. Kinderman approached him. “What are you doing, founding an order called ‘Lurking Fathers’?”

“I was trying to make myself invisible.”

“You failed,” said Kinderman ingenuously. He reached out his hand and touched Dyer. “Look at that. There’s your arm.”

“Gee, it’s sure a lot of fun going out with you, Lieutenant.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“No kidding.”

“That pathetic
putz
,’’ the detective breathed mournfully. “He ruined the movie for me.”

“You’ve already seen it ten times.”

“And another ten—even twenty—couldn’t hurt.” Kinderman took the priest’s arm and they walked. “Let’s go and have a bite at The Tombs or maybe Clyde’s or F. Scott’s,” the detective cajoled. “We can have a little nosh and discuss and critique.”

“Half a movie?”

“I remember the rest.”

Dyer halted them. “Bill, you look tired. Tough case?”

“Nothing much.”

“You look down,” insisted Dyer.

“No, I’m fine. And you?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re lying.”

“You, too,” said Dyer.

“True.”

Dyer’s gaze flicked over the detective’s face with concern. His friend looked exhausted and deeply troubled. There was something very wrong. “You really do look awfully tired,” he said. “Why don’t you go home and take a nap?”

Now he’s worried about me, thought Kinderman. “No, I can’t go home,” he said.

“Why not?”

“The carp.”

“You know, I thought you said ‘carp.’ “

“The carp,” repeated Kinderman.

“You said it again.”

Kinderman moved closer to Dyer, his face but an inch away from the priest’s, and he fixed him with a grim and steady stare. “My Mary’s mother is visiting; nu? She who complains that I keep bad company and am somehow related to Al Capone; she who gives my wife Chanukah presents of Chutzpah and Kibbutz Number Five, these of course being perfumes made in Israel–the best. Shirley. You now have a picture of her? Good. Soon she is cooking us a carp. A tasty fish. I’m not against it. But because it’s supposedly filled with impurities, Shirley has purchased this fish alive, and for three days now it’s been swimming in the bathtub. Even as we speak it is swimming in my bathtub. Up and down.

Down and up. Cleaning out the impurities. And I hate it. One further note: Father Joe, you are standing very close to me, right? Have you noticed? Yes. You have noticed that I haven’t had a bath in several days. Three. The carp. So I never go home until the carp is asleep. I’m afraid that if I see it while it’s swimming I’ll kill it.”

Dyer broke away from him, laughing.

Better. Much better, thought Kinderman. “Come on. now, is it Clyde’s or The Tombs or F. Scott’s?”

“Billy Martin’s.”

“Don’t be difficult. I’ve already made a reservation at Clyde’s.”

“Clyde’s.”

“You know, I thought you might say that.”

“I did.”

Together they walked off to forget the night.

Atkins sat behind his desk and blinked. He thought that perhaps he’d misunderstood, or perhaps had not explained himself clearly enough. He went through it again, this time holding the telephone closer to his mouth, and then again he heard the answers that he’d heard once before. “Yes, I see… . Yes, thank you. Thank you very much.” He hung up the phone. In the tiny, windowless little office he could hear his own breathing. He angled the desk lamp away from his eyes, and then held his hand underneath its glow. The tips of his fingers were bloodless and white underneath his nails. Atkins was frightened.

“Could I maybe have a little more tomato for the burger?” Kinderman was clearing a space on the table for the order of French fried potatoes that the dark–haired young waitress had brought them.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, and then set the plate down between Kinderman and Dyer. “Will three slices be enough?”

“Two is plenty.”

“More coffee?”

“No, I’m fine, thank you, miss.” The detective looked over at Dyer. “And you, Bruce Dern? A seventh cup?”

“No, thanks,” said Dyer, putting his fork down beside a plate on which rested a largely uneaten coconut–curry omelette. He reached for the cigarettes on the blue–and–white tablecloth.

“I’ll be back with the tomato,” said the waitress. She smiled and moved away toward the kitchen.

Kinderman stared at Dyer’s plate. “You’re not eating. Are you sick?”

“Too spicy,” said the priest.

“Too spicy? I’ve seen you dip Twinkies in mustard. Here, my son, let the expert tell you what’s spicy. Chef Milani to the rescue.” Kinderman picked up his fork and took a bite of Dyer’s omelette. Then he put down the fork and stared without expression at Dyer’s plate. “You have ordered an archaeological find.”

“Getting back to the movie,” said Dyer. He exhaled his first drag of smoke.

“On my list of the ten greatest movies ever made,” declared Kinderman. “What are your favorites, Father? Maybe name the top five.”

“My lips are sealed.”

“Not often enough.’’ Kinderman was salting the fried potatoes.

Dyer shrugged diffidently. “Who can pick the five best of anything?”

“Atkins,” the detective immediately responded. “He can tell you at the drop of a category: movies, fandangos–whatever. Mention heretics, he’ll give you a list of ten, and in order of preference, without hesitation. Atkins is a man of hurried decision. Never mind, he has taste and is usually right.”

“Oh, really? And so what are his favorite films?”

“The top five?”

“The top five.”

“Casablanca.”

“And what are the other four?”

“The same. He is absolutely crazy about that movie.”

The Jesuit nodded.

“He nods,” said Kinderman bleakly. “ ‘God is a tennis shoe,’ the heretic tells him, and Torquemada nods and says, ‘Guard, let him go. There is much to be said on both sides.’ Really, Father, these rushes to judgment have to stop. That’s what comes of all this singing and guitars in your ears.”

“You want my favorite movie?”

“Kindly hurry,” glowered Kinderman. “Rex Reed is in a phone booth waiting for my call.”

“It’s a Wonderful Life,” said Dyer. “Are you happy?”

“Yes, an excellent choice,” said Kinderman. He beamed.

“I guess I’ve seen it twenty times,” the priest admitted with a smile.

“It couldn’t hurt.”

“I sure do love it.”

“Yes, it’s innocent and good. It fills the heart.”

“You said the same about
Eraserhead
.”

“Don’t mention that obscenity,” Kinderman growled. “Atkins calls it ‘Long Day’s Journey into Goat.’ “

The waitress had come over and set down a dish of tomato slices. “Here you are, sir.”

“Thank you,” the detective told her.

She looked at the omelette in front of Dyer. “Something wrong with the omelette?”

“No, it’s just sleeping,” said Dyer.

She laughed. “Can I get you something else?”

“No, that’s fine. I guess I just wasn’t hungry.”

She gestured at the plate. “Shall I take it?”

He nodded, and she took it away.

“Eat something, Gandhi,” said Kinderman, pushing the plate of potatoes toward Dyer. The priest ignored them and asked, “How’s Atkins? Haven’t seen him since Christmas Eve Mass.”

“He is well and in June will be married.”

Dyer brightened. “Oh, that’s great.”

“He is marrying his childhood sweetheart. It’s so nice. It’s so sweet. Two little babes in the woods.”

“Where’s the wedding going to be?”

“In a truck. Even now they are saving their money for furniture. The bride is employed at a supermarket checkout stand, God bless her, while Atkins, as usual, assists me in the daytime and by night robs 7
-
Eleven stores. Incidentally, is it ethical for government employees to work two jobs, or am I just being finicky about this, Father? I welcome your spiritual advice.”

“I didn’t think they kept very much cash in those stores.’’

“Incidentally, how’s your mother?”

Dyer had been stubbing out his cigarette. He stopped and looked at Kinderman oddly. “Bill, she’s dead.”

The detective looked aghast.

“She’s been dead for a year and a half. I thought I told you.”

Kinderman shook his head. “I didn’t know.”

“Bill, I told you.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not. She was ninety–three and in pain and it was a blessing.’’ Dyer looked aside. The jukebox had come to life in the bar and he looked toward the sound. He saw students drinking beer from thick steins. “I guess I’d had five or six false alarms,” he said, returning his gaze to Kinderman. “A brother or a sister calling me over the years to say, ‘Joe, Mom’s dying, you’d better get up here.’ This time it happened.”

“I’m so sorry. It must have been terrible.”

“No. No, it wasn’t. When I got there they told me she was dead–my brother, my sister, the doctor. So I went in and I read the Last Rites by her bed. And when I finished she opened her eyes and looked at me. I nearly jumped out of my socks. She said, ‘Joe, that was lovely, a dear, nice prayer. And now could you fix a little drink for me, son?’ Well, Bill, all I could do was just tear downstairs to the kitchen, I was so damned excited. I poured her a scotch on the rocks, brought it up to her and she drank it. Then I took the empty glass from her hands, and she looked me in the eye and said, ‘Joe, I don’t think I ever told you this, son, but you’re a wonderful man.’ And then she died. But the thing that really got me–” He broke off, seeing Kinderman’s eyes welling up. “If you do your blubbering act, I’m leaving.”

Kinderman rubbed at his eye with a knuckle. “I’m sorry. But it’s sad to think that mothers are so fallible,” he said. “Please continue.”

Dyer leaned his head across the table. “The thing I can’t forget–the thing that really struck me more than anything– was that here was this wasted ninety–three–year–old lady with her brain cells shot, her vision and her hearing half gone and her body just a rag of what it was, but when she spoke to me, Bill–when she spoke to me, all of her was there.”

Kinderman nodded, looking down at his hands clasped together on the table. Black and unbidden, an image of Kintry nailed to the oars hit his mind like a bullet.

Dyer put a hand on Kinderman’s wrist. “Hey, come on. It’s okay,” he said. “She’s okay.”

“It just seems to me the world is a homicide victim,” Kinderman answered him morosely. He lifted his drooping gaze to the priest. “Would a God invent something like death? Plainly speaking, it’s a lousy idea. It isn’t popular, Father. It isn’t a hit. It’s not a winner.”

“Don’t be dumb. You wouldn’t want to live forever,” said Dyer.

“Yes, I would.”

“You’d get bored,” said the priest.

“I have hobbies.”

The Jesuit laughed.

Encouraged, the detective leaned forward and continued. “I think about the problem of evil.”

“Oh, that.”

“I must remember that. A very good saying. Yes, ‘Earthquake in India, Thousands Dead,’ says the headline. ‘Oh, that,’ I say.

“Saint Francis here is speaking to the birds, and in the meantime we have cancer and Mongoloid babies, not to mention the gastrointestinal system and certain aesthetics related to our bodies Audrey Hepburn wouldn’t like we should mention to her face. Can we have a good God with such nonsense going on? A God who goes blithely
shtravansing
through the cosmos like some omnipotent Billie Burke while children suffer and our loved ones lie in their waste and die? Your God on this question always takes the Fifth Amendment.”

“So why should the Mafia get all the breaks?”

“Enlightening words. Father, when are you preaching again? I would love to hear more of your insights.”

“Bill, the point is that right in the middle of this horror there’s a creature called man who can see that it’s horrible. So where do we come up with these notions like ‘evil’ and ‘cruel’ and ‘unjust’? You can’t say a line looks a little bit crooked unless you’ve got a notion of a line that’s straight.’’ The detective was trying to wave him off but the priest went on. “We’re a part of the world. If it’s evil, we shouldn’t be
thinking
that it’s evil. We’d be thinking that the things we call evil are just natural. Fish don’t feel wet in the water. They belong there, Bill. Men don’t.”

“Yes, I read this in G. K. Chesterton, Father. In fact, that’s how I know your Mister Big in the
velterrayn
isn’t some kind of a Jekyll and Hyde. But this only compounds the great mystery, Father, the big detective story in the sky that from the psalmists to Kafka has been making people crazy with trying to figure the whole thing out. Never mind. Lieutenant Kinderman is on the case. You know the Gnostics?”

“I’m a Bullets fan.”

“You are shameless. The Gnostics thought a ‘Deputy’ created the world.”

“This is truly insufferable,” said Dyer.

“I’m just talking.”

“Next you’ll tell me Saint Peter was a Catholic.”

“I’m just talking. So then God told this angel I mentioned, this Deputy, ‘Here, kid, here’s two dollars, go create for me the world–it’s my brainstorm, my latest new idea. And the angel went and did it, only not being perfect we have now the current
chazerei
of which I speak.”

“Is that your theory?” asked Dyer.

“No, that wouldn’t get God off the hook.”

“No kidding. What is your theory?”

Kinderman’s manner grew furtive. “Never mind. It’s something new. Something startling. Something big.”

The waitress had come by and slipped their check on the table, “There it is,” said Dyer, eyeing it.

Kinderman absently stirred his cold coffee and shifted his glance around the room as if watching for some eavesdropping secret agent. He leaned his head forward conspiratorially. “My approach to the world,” he said guardedly, “is as if it were the scene of a crime. You understand? I am putting together the clues. In the meantime, I have several ‘Wanted’ posters. You’d be good enough to hang them on the campus? They’re free. Your vow of poverty hangs heavy on your mind; I’m very sensitive to that. There’s no charge.”

“You’re not telling me your theory?”

“I will give you a hint,” said Kinderman. “Clotting.”

Dyer’s eyebrows knit together. “Clotting?”

“When you cut yourself, your blood cannot clot without fourteen separate little operations going on inside your body, and in just a certain order; little platelets and these cute little corpuscles, whatever, going here, going there, doing this, doing that, and in just this certain way, or you wind up looking foolish with your blood pouring out on the pastrami.”

“That’s the hint?”

“Here’s another: the autonomic system. Also, vines can find water from miles away.”

“I’m lost.”

“Stay put, we have picked up your signal.” Kinderman leaned his face closer to Dyer’s. “Things that supposedly have no consciousness are behaving as if they do.”

“Thank you, Professor Irwin Corey.”

Kinderman abruptly sat back and glowered. “You are the living proof of my thesis. You saw that horror movie called Alien?”

“Yes.”

“Your life story. In the meantime, never mind, I have learned my lesson. Never send Sherpa guides to lead a rock; it will only fall on top of them and give them a headache.’’

“But that’s all you’re going to tell me about your theory?” protested Dyer. He picked up his coffee cup.

“That is all. My final word.”

Suddenly the cup fell out of Dyer’s grasp. His eyes were unfocused. Kinderman grabbed at the cup and righted it, then picked up a napkin and blotted at the spillage before it ran over onto Dyer’s lap.

“Father Joe, what’s the matter?” asked Kinderman, alarmed. He began to get up, but Dyer waved him down. His manner seemed normal again.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” said the priest.

“Are you sick? What’s the matter?”

Dyer picked a cigarette out of his pack. He shook his head. “No, it’s nothing.” He lit up and then fanned out the match and tossed it lightly into an ashtray. “I’ve been getting these dumb little dizzy spells lately.”

“Seen a doctor?”

“I did, but he couldn’t find a thing. It could be anything. An allergy. A virus.” Dyer shrugged. “My brother Eddie had the same thing for years. It was emotional. Anyway, I’m checking in tomorrow morning for some tests.”

“Checking in?”

“Georgetown General. Father President insists. He’s got a sneaking suspicion I’m allergic to exam papers, frankly, and he wants some scientific confirmation.”