True Confessions (32 page)

The guest of honor arrived with the Cardinal. Desmond Spellacy wondered if he had only imagined the wary look on Seamus Fargo’s face. Picking Seamus up at Saint Basil’s in his own limousine was another idea of Hugh Danaher’s. Showing his respect for an old friend was the way the Cardinal had put it. A way to keep Mon-signor Fargo on a tight rein was more like it. “Good evening, Monsignor,” Seamus Fargo had said. “Good evening, Monsignor,” Desmond Spellacy had said. “I notice your friend, Mr. Amsterdam, is not here this evening, Monsignor,” Seamus Fargo had said. Desmond Spellacy had smiled. You had to hand it to Seamus. He would go down with all guns firing. Sitting on the dais he was impassive. Never once a smile at Dan T. Campion’s master-of-ceremonies jokes. Saint Patrick. The Mother Superior. The Catholic priest and the Jewish rabbi. The Catholic priest and the Protestant minister. The Catholic priest, the Jewish rabbi and the Protestant minister. Not the kind of stories designed to tickle Monsignor Fargo’s funny bone. Desmond Spellacy checked the notes for his speech. Also not designed to amuse Monsignor Fargo. First the obligatory nod to the Protestants in the audience. Who were always called our Protestant brethren in Christ. Then friendship and common cause. The muck and the mire. No atheists in the foxholes. It was an easy transition to Seamus. A fighter in the trenches of Catholicism. A combat veteran of sixty years. Decorated by the Church. A hero in the eyes of God. An example to those younger priests of the archdiocese who were ready to take over the reins from their elders.

That was where Seamus had started and stared. He knew the jig was up then. The well-deserved retirement was only a paragraph away. All the amenities were observed. Monsignor Fargo shook Monsignor Spellacy’s hand. Monsignor Fargo thanked Hugh Dan-aher. And his Protestant brethren in Christ. He said there were others more worthy of the honors and accolades he had received. He would strive to be an example. There was no retirement for a priest. He was always a servant of the Lord in whatever niche the Cardinal archbishop had hollowed out for him. Applause. Handshakes. The bargaining had begun in the automobile ride back to Saint Basil’s. Desmond Spellacy sat in the front seat, the Cardinal and Monsignor Fargo in the rear.

My nephew, Seamus Fargo had said. Richard.

Yes, the Cardinal had said.

He’s been a curate for eleven years. He deserves a parish of his own.

Not Saint Basil’s, the Cardinal said.

Saint Margaret’s is. open, Seamus Fargo said.

Done, the Cardinal said.

My retirement?

I thought you might like to be chaplain at Saint Francis Hospital, the Cardinal said.

No.

What do you have in mind?

There’s a parish in the desert. Saint Mary’s.

It’s bankrupt, Seamus.

I would like to die in the desert,
Eminenza
.

After a moment the Cardinal said, Done.

The limousine pulled to a stop in front of the rectory at Saint Basil’s. The three priests got out of the car.

Good night, Monsignor, Desmond Spellacy said.

Good night, Monsignor, Seamus Fargo said.

I’m sorry, Seamus, the Cardinal said.

Good-bye, Hugh, Seamus Fargo said.

“The funny thing was, they were both Fords,” Mary Margaret Spellacy said. “You don’t often get accidents when both cars are the same kind. Two Buicks. Two Hudsons. Two Studebakers. These were both Fords, though. The paper didn’t say if they were the same year. If they were both ‘41s, that would have been a coincidence. At the corner of Lincoln and Devonshire. It was lucky we weren’t there. Tom was there just the other day, Monsignor. That’s what he told me. If it had happened the other day, he would have been killed. I was praying to Saint Anthony was the reason he wasn’t at the corner of Lincoln and Devonshire. He drives a Plymouth, though, and these were two Fords. It wouldn’t’ve been such a coincidence if one was a Ford and one was a Plymouth . . .”

Lincoln and Devonshire, Tom Spellacy said to himself. What the hell is she talking about. They don’t cross, Lincoln and Devonshire. One’s in Santa Monica, one’s in the Valley. He wanted to laugh. It didn’t matter, they didn’t cross. On this one, nothing crossed. All that work and nothing crossed, that was the biggest joke of all. Leland K. Standard jumped off the Bradbury Building for nothing. Dildo Dot accused Al C. Hopkins for nothing. Al C. Hopkins told his wife he had not seen Dildo Dot since a double-header between Portland and the Angels at Wrigley Field on the Fourth of July, 1943, when he fucked her in his car in the parking lot between games. Al C. Hopkins should have kept his mouth shut. The shrinks, the waitresses, the cab drivers—none of them cross-connected with Lois Fazenda. Nor did the transvestites who turned up with her underwear and lipstick containers and hair curlers. Not even Jack Amsterdam. In any way that mattered. Brenda. Des. Corinne. Turd Turner. Mickey Gagnon. The Chinks behind Crotty. They didn’t cross. Not a single one mattered.

The only thing that mattered was that he didn’t want to fuck Mary Margaret.

And the systems approach. That mattered. Going through all that paper. Not so much to find a definite pattern as to avoid lying between the legs of someone who told him to say a prayer to Saint Anthony when he couldn’t find a parking place.

Saint Anthony. The patron saint of the lost and found. He wondered if he should thank Saint Anthony. Not for finding a parking place. For finding a definite pattern.

The definite pattern.

In the unlikeliest place of all.

Bingo Mclnerney’s end-of-tour report.

Which of course Lorenzo Jones had written up.

Tom Spellacy wondered if he even would have reread the report if Lorenzo’s block printing weren’t so neat. Most officers on auto patrol wrote like Bingo. Smudges. Erasures. Misspellings. Wrong names. Wrong times. Felonies and misdemeanors mis-numbered. It was a wonder the DA ever got a conviction. Lorenzo’s report was a model. A 927, investigate unknown trouble, at 6:43 a.m. Changed to a 927D, investigate possible dead body, at 6:47. Seven minutes from Western and Pico to 39th and Norton. A 187 reported by Officers Mclnerney and Jones at 6:54. A Code 3 requested at 6:55. Detectives requested, 914, 6:56, coroner requested, 914C, 6:57. Victim: female person. Cause of death: unknown. Other injuries: traumatic amputation. That was a nice touch, the traumatic amputation. He must be boning up on forensic medicine, Lorenzo, at law school. The DA would like that. And Bingo wouldn’t understand it. Coon talk, Bingo would call it. Just loud enough so that Lorenzo could hear him. Not that it would bother Lorenzo. He did his job and kept his mouth shut. No witnesses. No loiterers. No unexplained noises. No strange cars. Nothing suspicious.

And no mistakes either.

Except for the 187, a typical lobster trick end-of-tour report. Tom Spellacy riffled through the other pages. A traffic violation. A domestic argument. A drunk pissing on a sidewalk charged with indecent exposure. A defective burglar alarm. A speeding ticket. Bingo and Lorenzo, eight hours in a black-and-white, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., seldom stopping for coffee (Code 7, out of service to eat, he was sure Lorenzo would write) because the male Caucasian police office did not like to be seen at the same hash-house table as the male Negro police officer. At 5:07, a 902 reported on the 2600 block of Hoover. 5:13, the black-and-white arrives at the scene of the accident. A 901H, ambulance requested, dead body, at 5:16. Make of auto: Ford V-8. Color: black. Year: 1936. License: VOM 399. Registration: Pugh, Harold. Name(s) of injured parties: Pugh, Harold. Type of injury: deceased.

Name(s) of injured parties: Pugh, Harold.

He stared at the name for a long time.

Oh, God, what a joke.

A definite pattern and the definite pattern was a dead man. Dead even before the victim was discovered.

Victim: female person.

Cause of death: unknown.

Other injuries: traumatic amputation.

He looked at the clock. 1:30. He was wide awake. No time to think about Mary Margaret. He burrowed through the piles of paper on the floor. The M. O. file, that was what he was looking for. What was it Brenda had said? He was a walking fucking barber’s college. That was it. A barber who liked to shave the pubic hair off the whores he picked up.

Pugh, Harold. Questioned, not charged, 1944.

Pugh, Harold. The suspect file. He remembered now. He had made the call himself. The northwestern directory, 529 East Colorado Avenue. Mrs. Harold Pugh had cried on the telephone. Harold was dead. Harold’s car had hit a telephone pole.

Question: what the hell was a barber doing out at 5:07 a.m.?

God bless Masaryk. He had found the announcement of Harold Pugh’s death in the
Times
and clipped it to the file:

The Barbers’ Hall of Fame. It was too perfect. Tom Spellacy wondered if there were a session on traumatic amputation at the annual convention of the National Association of Barber School Owners. The traumatic amputation of cowlicks, forelocks, pigtails, ponytails, kiss curls, topknots, ringlets, tresses, lovelocks, elf locks.

Quiff.

Beaver.

Steady. Don’t get giddy. One step at a time.

He repeated the question: what was he doing on the 2600 block of Hoover at five in the morning?

Traveling at such a high rate of speed that the car was totaled.

The car.

A 1936 Ford V-8.

Black.

License plate VOM 399.

“... Of course it’s a mortal sin to eat meat on Friday,” Mary Margaret Spellacy said. “Unless it’s a holiday. Like Christmas. When you get a dispensation. Not for my pa, though. Mr. Maher said a rule’s a rule. So that Christmas we had sand dabs. And rice pudding. With raisins. He liked raisins in his rice pudding. One thing Mr. Maher didn’t hold with, and that was dispensations . . .”

Oh, Mary Margaret, Tom Spellacy thought. Listening to her all these years he must have picked up something. He had stopped questioning the inner logic that connected Hearse Dennehy and the Scully who wanted to rhumba with the sand dabs and rice pudding Eugene Maher had for Christmas. The logic was simply there. Linear thinking was irrelevant when you tried to follow Mary Margaret. You followed the bouncing ball. It would be hard to explain that to Fuqua. Fuqua would not understand how the years spent tracking Mary Margaret’s monologues would bounce him inevitably from Pugh, Harold (dec), barber consultant to Roy Rogers and Trigger and Gene Autry and Champion, to the Santa Monica Pier and Shopping Cart Johnson.

Shopping Cart Johnson, who quoted license plates.

A Reo to travel the open road. YNJ 021.

A flivver outside a Calexico whorehouse. NDS 465.

A randy nonagenarian with a Studebaker. XYL 468.

Tom Spellacy turned the pages of his notebook. He knew the license plate was there.

Ahhh.

The El Segundo barracks. Abandoned since 1944.

A 1936 Ford V-8.

VOM 399.

The definite pattern.

The lines that crossed.

Mary Margaret had been asleep when he got home. He slipped into bed beside her and for the first time in years he wanted her. He slipped his hand between her legs and she rolled over and he got on top of her. She wanted to take off the flannel nightgown and he said no. The flannel nightgown made her Mary Margaret. Who talked like a bouncing ball and whom he had not wanted to fuck and those two things together led him to the lines that crossed.

Which made her fuckable.

Fucky.

Mary Margaret Spellacy.

“. . . No. 10 pancake is what they use at McDonough & McCarthy,” Mary Margaret Spellacy said. “Shake Hands told me that himself. At Pa’s wake. He looks down at Mr. Maher and says, ‘He looks waxy.’ And he looked grand to me until he says that. The powder they use at Tonetti & Leo,’ he says, ‘you can buy it at the five-and-dime. Which is why he looks waxy, your pa. Me and Sonny only use No. 10 pancake.’ It doesn’t give you the waxy look, No. 10 pancake. Shake Hands’s very words. I had to do it over again, McDonough & McCarthy would do Pa. No five-and-dime powder for Mr. Maher the next time . . .”

She had been less fuckable in the morning. No freshly squeezed orange juice, he told her. No hot cross buns. No link sausage, no biscuits. No eggs, no buckwheat cakes. Not even coffee. He was on the road at seven, at the El Segundo Barracks by eight. The chain-link fence around the facility was torn and the main gate held shut only by a single strand of clothes-hanger wire wound around the gate post. There was no one about. He shouted but no one stirred in any of the four two-story wooden barracks inside the camp ground. No watchman, no vagrants or vandals scurrying for safety. Tom Spellacy unwound the hanger wire and picked his way past the broken bottles and the used rubbers. The stones lining the pebble walkways had once been whitewashed but they had been kicked away like tin cans. A breeze off the ocean bent the weeds growing between the buildings and raised little clouds of dust. On the steps of the first barracks, he stopped for a moment and peered out at the remains of the antiaircraft gun emplacements dotting the sand dunes. Inside the barracks was stifling despite the broken windows. He brushed through the dense network of cobwebs and tracked through rubble that seemed not to have been disturbed for years. A step gave way on the stairs, and he stopped and automatically reached for his service revolver, but the wood was only rotten and the top floor was no different than the bottom. The second barracks was the same, and the third. Tom Spellacy took off his jacket and cursed Shopping Cart Johnson. And himself for coming out here on a Saturday morning. Dust was beginning to cling to the hairs inside his nose and to cake against his sweat-soaked shirt. He stopped to wipe his face with a handkerchief and then he saw the small cardboard box wedged between the ground and the bottom stair of the steps leading into the fourth barracks. He pulled at the box and a colony of ants crawled from it and paraded over his hand. The box dropped from his grasp and the rotten remains of an egg roll and a single spare rib fell to the ground. With his handkerchief, Tom Spellacy wiped the ants from his hand, then settled on his haunches and stared at the cardboard box. He took a pencil from his pocket and used it to turn the box over. It was gray and crumbling, but he could still make out the faded red lettering on the box cover: