The Cavanaugh Quest (12 page)

Then I went away, leaving them with their obsession and sorrow.

The Twins were making up an earlier rainout so it was a twi-night doubleheader starting at six. I’d finished some work and had grilled knockwurst on my balcony, opened a Grain Belt, and settled down to listen to the game. The weather had cleared off but it was cool and I’d pulled a sweater on; maybe the summer was gone, snap, like a light going off. I turned to
The Baseball Encyclopedia
to check on Roy Smalley, the Cub shortstop of my youth. Ah, where was he now? And where was the boy I’d been? They didn’t make shortstops like Smalley anymore but then what could you expect? The Golden Age was over, kid, hadn’t you heard?

But the game wasn’t working. I wondered briefly if I should tape the double-header. I had a library of taped baseball games, just regular everyday games; they helped to pass long winter nights when the movies on the tube were too new, no longer a part of the Golden Age. I didn’t tape the double-header, though. Instead I thought about Timothy Dierker’s scrapbook, wondering what it could have contained, why the murderer would take it away. What could it contain that the murderer wanted to keep or didn’t want anyone else to find? Banff? Hawaii? New York? None of that made sense to me; all I could connect was the hunting and fishing club stuff, but that seemed almost equally farfetched. Just more familiar. I’d spent an afternoon going over Archie’s pictures. Were Archie’s pictures and Tim’s the same? Had I seen what the murderer had taken away? Maybe, but I wouldn’t have recognized it as a motive for murder, if indeed it was. Circles going nowhere. Who cleaned out Larry Blankenship’s dreary little place? What had been taken? And did the same person take the scrapbook and Larry’s bits and pieces? Talk about a headache …

I didn’t think about it for long. The Twins were batting in the bottom of the third when the telephone rang.

“Is this Paul Cavanaugh?” It was a woman, abrupt, quiet.

“Yes, speaking.”

“My name is Kim Roderick, Mr. Cavanaugh. We haven’t met but I’m beginning to feel as if I know you. And I must tell you that I’m not in the least enjoying it. I’ve been told by two people that you have been asking questions about my personal life. Whatever reasons you may have, I suspect they are insufficient. I want it stopped. You are making me very uncomfortable and very cross.” There was a lot of silence while she let me think it over with the ball bouncing around in my court; I saw her in black and white, tensing, hair flying, about to hit her backhand. Her voice made me feel cold.

“Are you always this aggressive?”

“I am angry, Mr. Cavanaugh. And perplexed by what you are doing. Is that clear?”

“Abundantly. Look, I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed you …”

“For disturbing me.”

“Well, there are lots of disturbed people, Mrs. Roderick—”

“Miss Roderick.”

“Lots of disturbed people everywhere I turn. Now, I don’t want to be overly aggressive myself, you understand, but you’re last in line at the moment. I’ve done nothing to invade your privacy. I have merely asked some innocent questions. Maybe I’m just working myself up to ask for a date. Have you considered that possibility?”

“It’ll be a waste of time, Mr. Cavanaugh. You’re not my type and I do consider it not only an invasion of my privacy but harassment as well. I don’t want to argue about it. I want it stopped.”

“Miss Roderick, you bring out the absolute worst in me. Why did Larry Blankenship kill himself?” I heard a little gasp which I found very satisfying and went resolutely on. “And who murdered Tim Dierker last night?” I began to whistle “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby” in the silence which followed, rather a nice touch.

“Who are you, Mr. Cavanaugh?”

“You answer my questions and I’ll answer yours.”

“I did not know Timothy Dierker was … dead. You took me by surprise.”

“Your surprise is nothing compared to Tim’s. As far as you’re concerned, Miss Roderick, I’m simply trying to fill in the blanks. For a friend of mine. And I think I’m going to stay at it for a while.”

“I think we’d better talk,” she said. “We’re off to a bad start.” The words were vaguely conciliatory but her voice was coming from another planet. “Are you free tomorrow morning?”

“Yes. Where and when?”

“Here. Riverfront Towers. Eleven o’clock. Is that all right?”

“Sure. That’s fine.” She hung up before I finished.

She’d unnerved me, set my chest hopping about like something skittish and afraid. I spread the photographs of her out on my desk but looking at them made my mouth dry. I scooped them up, dropped them into a drawer, and made a list of the members of the club. I put Father Martin Boyle at the top by sheer chance, looked up his address in the telephone directory, and decided to drop by for a chat. Maybe he could remember something about those times up north, some reason why a murderer would steal an ancient scrapbook. A feast of memories.

Prospect Park is a slightly tacky high-rent district sequestered among trees and narrow curving streets, just off the bustle of University Avenue where Minneapolis and St. Paul converge in an array of warehouses, an Octopus Car Wash, some fast-food joints. The houses are large and canted against hillsides, the sidewalks are full of cracks and sprouts of grass, and you can walk to the University of Minnesota. Most of the park’s residents are academics of one kind or another. Looking over their lives is a tower rising up from the crest of the hill at the park’s center. When I left the Porsche sagging disconsolately beside the crumbling curb, the tower had lost its pointed top in fog coming up off the Mississippi across the East River Road.

Father Boyle’s house was a large old frame affair that looked comfortable and needed paint. I climbed the two long steep flights of steps and was puffing when I rang the bell. It took some time but Boyle himself, leaning on a cane, finally answered it. He was wearing baggy tweed pants, a white shirt with the collar open to make room for heavy jowls, and a heavy cardigan. He had a stubble of white beard on his cheeks, a cigar clamped in the corner of his mouth, and in the light from the hallway his eyes had an unhealthy opacity which turned what had once been bright blue to a luminous gray.

I introduced myself as Archie Cavanaugh’s son and he smiled broadly, the face of a garrulous man who loved to talk, motioned me inside, where the smell of cigar smoke had permeated everything, the walls, the draperies, the furniture. He had been the church’s emissary to the university’s student body for long time. He was accustomed to visitors, practiced at making them feel at ease. He wheezed and mumbled as we went the length of the hallway, keeping a running conversation going all by himself; he waddled, spoke with a hint of brogue, and I wondered how he got around the golf course.

“Come on,” he said, leading me into a large bookish room at the back of the main floor. “My study,” he rumbled, “I hope you can stand the heat. It dries out the air on these foggy nights and my leg likes it hot and dry. Siddown, siddown. I’ll get us a nip.” He had a fire going in an oversize brickfront fireplace with his immense, bloated leather chair pulled up close. A small gout stool stood in front of the chair. While he got a tray of glasses and bottles I settled on a couch Freud might have used and checked the surroundings; threadbare Oriental rug, dark woodwork, leaded glass in the windows and bookcases, the remains of a pot-roast dinner on a heavy round table, an aged painting of an English countryside with a fox hunt in full cry. He came back and set the tray on an end table. “Irish whiskey, two fingers, it’s my drink,” he said. He put a recording of Chopin mazurkas on the Thorens turntable, flicked a couple of switches on the Pioneer receiver, and the sound began purring softly from speakers which bulked darkly in corners. With a deep, contented sigh he eased himself down into the overflowing chair and propped his slippered foot onto the stool. He toasted me with his glass, radiating the sensuality of a truly self-indulgent man, and asked what he could do for me. I told him that I was a friend of Tim Dierker’s, that I’d had a talk with him just recently, that I was upset by his death. He frowned, nodding.

“It was the manner of his going, eh? We’re all about to cross that bar, all of us elderly folks, and death doesn’t hold quite the fears it once did … but to die the way Timothy did, now, there’s an unpleasant death. Upsetting, yes, it is.” He puffed at the wet-ended cigar, closed his eyes. “A Detective Bernstein, fella running for mayor, called me today, asked me what I made of it … What the devil could I say? What could I make of it?”

“I suppose he wanted a lead on a motive,” I said.

“Violence—we live in an age of brute force, don’t we? And since when has evil needed a motive? Crime, I’m thinking, is less involved with motive every day. We breed it here, in this time and this place, an incalculable evil. Don’t you agree? My friend Father Patulski lives here with me, is fascinated by the existence of evil, acts as if it’s something he’s newly discovered—tonight where is he? Having a second look at
The Exorcist.
Can you beat it? Once wasn’t enough for him …” He shook his head at Patulski’s innocence. “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t recognize evil, it’s always been there, hasn’t it? Now and again it rears up, spits at us, takes a life or corrupts a soul, submerges once again. Ah, I live with it … Patulski believes in the power of goodness and faith, evil therefore attracts him. I believe in the power of evil, the banality of it, and I am almost bored by it. Evil sometimes wins, which is what Patulski cannot quite understand. Timothy Dierker, my old friend, is thrown off a high building—faith won’t change that, will it? Dead as a doornail and we’d better hope his soul was in decent repair …”

“Are you talking about some abstract evil?” I asked. “A
man,
someone he knew, took him up on that roof and pushed him off, someone with a reason. Bernstein is not impressed with philosophical evil, I’m afraid. He wants to know who wanted Tim Dierker dead—”

“I know who did it,” Father Boyle said. I blinked. “A tormented soul, Mr. Cavanaugh, and does it matter just whose? Milton said it and it applies.

So farewell hope, and, with hope,

farewell fear,

Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost.

Evil, be thou my good.

“Someone has said, ‘Evil, be thou my good,’ and killed Tim Dierker. Find that poor soul and for whatever good it does you, you’ll have found a murderer.” He drank his Irish whiskey and lapsed into silence, staring opaquely into the fire. “Patulski should be here. He could talk of the possessed, how evil infests a man …”

“Did you ever read Conrad’s
Under Western Eyes
?” I asked, dredging up an old quote.

“No, I never have. Though I expect Patulski has, a fellow countryman and all.”

“Conrad had an idea about evil, too, Father. He said, ‘The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.’ Maybe I’m a subscriber to that one.” The heat was making me sticky. A breeze wafted from an open window; I felt it shimmer along the back of my neck.

“Conrad believed in men,” he said slowly. “I believe in the Devil. Among others. A personification of evil, the Devil. The problem is he has all the good times, or so I suspect … He whispers behind the leaves, he rides outside and takes the hindmost, he is the author of confusion.” He belched deep in his chest and looked at me. “Anyway, the man is dead and you want a reason why and you can’t prosecute the Devil. I understand. I was merely indulging myself.” He dribbled more whiskey into his tumbler.

“Do you have a scrapbook, a photo album? I was going through my father’s the other day, looking at his old photographs of the bunch that used to go up north … I’m thinking of writing a piece on the north country and maybe using a photograph or two from those days to illustrate—” I wanted to get him on another track altogether. I didn’t know what was going on in his mind or how much he had been drinking before I got there. I wanted to see his scrapbook, though, without alarming him.

“Somewhere,” he rumbled again, almost sleepily. He brushed the white stubble; he seemed so much older than Archie. He seemed a man who had lived hard, unusual for a priest. He pushed himself out of the chair and, leaning on his cane, hobbled to a cabinet beneath a bookcase. After rummaging among stacks of papers, folders, journals, and magazines, he pulled a thick volume free of the litter. “Here,” he said. He pushed the dinner dishes away and flopped the album down on the table. “I haven’t looked in this book for twenty-five years, young man …” I stood beside him as he slowly turned the pages past vestiges of a life which meant nothing to me. There were pictures of him with a series of young girls, invariably attractive across the years, then the young theological student in the company of others like himself. No more girls, at least not for picture taking. It must have been difficult for him: Why had he taken the turn he did? His faith was in the Devil, not man, but maybe that was whiskey talking, or maybe he’d meant merely that this trust was in the abstract, not the refuse of everyday life. How do you ever know what anybody else means anyway?

“There’s Archie,” I said. “This is the stuff I wanted to see.”

His face was changing ever so slightly, as if the yellowing photographs were soaking up what life remained in him, as if the vigor of them drained away the strength of the old man he had become. “A long time ago, too damn long ago.” He sighed, his breath whistling in his throat. I heard him muffle a belch, smelled his whiskey breath as he bent near me. The photographs were much the same as Archie’s, the same scenes of camaraderie. Sociably I asked him to identify the various people; I wanted him to keep the album out so I could wander across the photographs in search of something which could strike me as anyway out of the ordinary—something a murderer would haul away with him. I knew it was almost pointless since I had no idea what I was looking for, but you never knew. He went through several rows of pictures, identifying people I knew. In one he gave the woman who kept house a name: “Rita,” he said, just “Rita.” And later, looking somewhat embarrassed by the attention, an ageless-looking Indian in a worn leather jacket and work pants; “Willie, he was our guide, hunting or fishing, he knew that country better than any map. Lived up there all his life. Absolutely at home, the deeper into the woods, the better. Willie …” The memories were draining him off. I could feel him growing remote from me, as if he were slipping back into a lost and plainly preferable time.