True Confessions (6 page)

“Which set of books do I get to see, Dan?”

“It’s not every father has such a grand head for business, Des,” Dan T. Campion said. “You could get blood out of a stone, is what I like about you. And what Chet likes about you, too.”

“And let’s say you throw your fee from Chet into the Building Fund,” Desmond Spellacy said. “Or else it’s the receivers for Chester Hanrahan.”

Which was how Saint Eugene’s got built in Rancho Rio. And Chester Hanrahan got the sash of a Knight of Malta. And accepted the Cardinal’s offer to become chairman of the Building Fund. All because of a conversation in the steam room at Knollwood Country Club.

“
Domine, non sum dignus
. . .”

A new chairman of the Building Fund. It was his choice, he knew that. Subject only to the cardinal’s veto. “Get the feel of the situation,” the Cardinal said the morning after Chester Hanrahan died. “Play a few rounds of tennis, a few sets of golf.” The advice nagged. The Cardinal knew the correct terms as well as he did; he wondered why His Eminence had slipped in the needle. Perhaps it was the Cardinal’s way of suggesting that there had been complaints about the chancellor from the clergy. Complaints about the amount of time the chancellor spent in country-club locker rooms buttering up the fat cats of the archdiocese. Desmond Spellacy had heard the whispers. And the pastors didn’t like the way he nosed around in parish affairs, either. If there was one thing a pastor guarded jealously, it was the freedom to run his parish as he saw fit. The cost of a new boiler was none of the chancery’s business. Desmond Spellacy did not operate that way. No, he had said to the new Carrara marble altar at Saint Dominick’s. Too expensive. No to the new baseball diamond at Holy Redeemer. Not unless you’re thinking of celebrating high mass at third base, Father. Pay off the debt on your church first. And speaking of your church, Father, it smells like a locker room. Tact never had been his long suit. And so the pastors complained.

They criticized him, Desmond Spellacy knew, because they didn’t dare criticize the Cardinal. What they didn’t know was that the plan to curb their independence had come from the Cardinal himself. Centralization, the Cardinal said—it was the only way to cut costs and melt the deficits. If the pastors didn’t like it. ... That was where he came in. Desmond Spellacy had no illusions about where he fit into the Cardinal’s scheme. He was a combination lightning rod, hatchet man and accountant. Someone to fend off the pastors and take the heat off the Cardinal. Young enough not to be infected with old ideas about how to run a parish or to have formed friendships that could not be broken. If necessary. Ruthless enough to sack an old monsignor. If necessary. Tough enough to talk decimal points with a Protestant banker or lean on a contractor. If necessary. In other words, a man to do the dirty work. “A few rounds of tennis, a few sets of golf.” Desmond Spellacy knew now what the Cardinal meant: watch your step. One false move and you become an expensive luxury. Off the plank goes Desmond Spellacy.

Not if I can help it, he thought.

“In principio erat verbum . . .”

He heard the cough. That one-of-a-kind cough. Desmond Spellacy searched the cathedral. That awful, racking cough meant that Jack Amsterdam was there. He thought, It’s only natural. Jack had done business with Chet Hanrahan. And Jack would have a rooting interest in whoever was the new chairman of the Building Fund. Because the new chairman of the Building Fund would have to do business with Jack. Because in the interest of central financing, Desmond Spellacy had let seventeen million dollars in building contracts to Jack Amsterdam. Schools, hospitals, convents, churches, rectories. There was nothing to be alarmed about. The concrete was good. Nothing had fallen down yet.

Nothing had fallen down yet
. That’s a grisly goddamn thought. Desmond Spellacy crossed himself quickly and asked forgiveness for taking the Lord’s name in vain.

It was just that there was something about Jack that encouraged thoughts like that. What happened to Ferdinand Coppola when he made the bid on the new Saint Columbkille’s Hospital contract was a case in point. The night before the bids were unsealed, two of Ferdie’s big rigs were tipped over into the Los Angeles River. “A high Santa Ana wind condition” blew his rigs over, Ferdie said. And withdrew his bid. Six tons each, those rigs were, and they had never taken a dive to a wind before. “It’s a rough business, boyo,” Dan T. Campion told him. “Stay out of it.” And so Jack Amsterdam got the contract to build Saint Columbkille’s.

“So Jack’s gone legit,” Tommy had said when he heard about the contract.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Desmond Spellacy said.

“It means you’re doing business with a real sweetheart there,” Tom Spellacy said. “Him and His Eminence will get along good. You ever hear his confession, give me a call. That’s one I’d like to sit in on. He swears a lot, I bet. And I bet he’s missed his Easter Duty.”

Desmond Spellacy chose his words carefully. He wanted to know about Jack, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it from Tommy.

“You’ve been checking up, then?”

“There’s nothing to check. He’s clean.”

“So there you are.”

“Listen, Des, Mary Magdalene was clean, too. But she used to be a hooker, someone told me once. And the day she signed on with Jay Cee there, someone pulled her rap sheet.”

“That’s vivid,” Desmond Spellacy said. “And what does this someone tell you about Jack?”

“The ginneys leave him alone is one thing they tell me. They tried to move in on him a few years back, the ginneys. And the story is, Jack took this ginzo from Detroit and dried him out. Dominic. Dominic LoPresti. That was this ginzo’s name. Jack took Dominic and stuck him in this dryer in a laundry over to Lincoln Heights there. Shrunk the poor bastard down to twenty-one pounds.”

It was Tommy’s kind of story. Tommy liked to tell stories about the lowest kind of human behavior. Stories Desmond Spel-lacy was not likely to hear in confession. This time, however, the story seemed to hold an implicit warning. Desmond Spellacy erased the suggestion.

“You know that for a fact?”

“Des, let me tell you something. I don’t know the Holy Ghost for a fact. But you’re in the Holy Ghost business. So when you tell me about the Holy Ghost, I believe it.”

“Meaning I should believe you.”

“Meaning you want to roll around in the shit and think it’s clover, then you’re not going to believe me, I tell you this is a bad guy to be in the kip with. So let’s change the subject. I’m sorry I ever brought it up.”

The construction of Saint Columbkille’s Hospital was the beginning of a long and profitable relationship between the archdiocese and Jack Amsterdam. None of the other contractors ever bid against him. Perhaps because the cost of cranes was so high. But now there was the story of the asphalt. Chet Hanrahan had mentioned it before he died. Ten tons of asphalt, Jack’s invoices said. But the word was nine tons of asphalt and one ton of sand. Which meant that the Cardinal was getting stiffed for a ton of asphalt.

“I don’t believe it,” Dan T. Campion said. “It’s Ferdie Coppola putting out that story, and everyone knows Ferdie’s a sorehead.”

“Twenty-five grand each those cranes of his cost, is what I hear,” Desmond Spellacy said. “Maybe that’s why he’s such a sorehead.”

“The insurance covered it,” Dan T. Campion said. “I had Phil Leahy look at the policies for me. Wind damage was one thing Ferdie was specifically covered for.”

“I think maybe we better ask Phil Leahy if we’ve got a policy on someone making a chump out of His Eminence. I keep hearing stories.”

“From your brother, the policeman,” Dan T. Campion said. “Always thinking the worst, a policeman. Old stories, Des, never proven. He’s getting on, Jack, he wants to make amends.”

“For what?” Desmond Spellacy said.

“For any mistakes he might have made,” Dan T. Campion said.

“Conscience money is what you mean,” Desmond Spellacy said.

“It’s all still green, the last time I looked, anyway,” Dan T. Campion said. “You’ve got to take the long view, Des. Anyone who gives $75,000 to the Building Fund, we’ve got to trust him for a ton of asphalt. Assuming, which I don’t, Ferdie’s story is true.”

“There’s a word for that seventy-five,” Desmond Spellacy said. “Kickback is the one I had in mind.”

“Insurance,” Dan T. Campion said. “Insurance is the word I would use. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Des, it goes with the franchise. He builds a nice hospital, Jack. He builds a nice school, too. But you ask a contractor to be in a state of grace all the time, you’d be saying mass in a wigwam. His Eminence, too. He’d catch cold, I think, an old man like that.”

“I’ll tell His Eminence that,” Desmond Spellacy said. “I’ll tell him you’re worried about his nose getting all stopped up from saying mass in a tepee. I’ll tell him you think the best way to get rid of a cold like that is not to sniff around any asphalt. He’ll appreciate the diagnosis, His Eminence.”

“You do that, Des,” Dan T. Campion said. “You take your bathroom scales out to Jack’s place there, and you weigh ten tons of asphalt. It’s messy is what they tell me, but you do it. Then you tell His Eminence and His Eminence will find you a nice little parish in the middle of Nebraska. It’s nice in Nebraska, I hear. You get the change of seasons. A hundred above in the summer, a hundred below in the winter.”

“There’s one thing I wonder about you, Dan. When was the last time your right hand knew what your left hand was doing?”

“1908,” Dan T. Campion said, pronouncing it nineteen ought eight, and punctuating it with the loud laugh, the slap on the back.

“
Et verbum caro factum est . . .
”

There were times, Desmond Spellacy thought, when Dan T. Campion worried him more than Jack Amsterdam. Not that Dan didn’t have his uses. The Cardinal sneezed and Dan T. Campion reached for his handkerchief. It was the other noses that he was cleaning that bothered Desmond Spellacy. Give him ten hands and he’d be picking pockets with nine of them and making the sign of the cross with the tenth, Chet Hanrahan had said. And Chet was no altar boy. Which was why the new chairman of the Building Fund was so important. He needed his own man. Someone, to put it bluntly, who belonged to him. Someone to keep tabs on Dan T. Campion. Someone to pass the word to Neddy Flynn and Emmett Flaherty and the other Catholic contractors (were there any non-Catholic contractors, he suddenly wondered) that they should bid against Jack Amsterdam on any new construction projects. There was one thing you could say about Neddy and Emmett. You wouldn’t pick up the newspaper in the morning and read that they’d stuck somebody in a dryer. No old stories, never proven. At least no old stories he couldn’t live with.

The new chairman. Someone who would help him unload Jack. When the time came.

Who?

Phil Leahy had all he could handle with the diocesan insurance programs. Ed Ginty would have been perfect, if he weren’t in the penetentiary for embezzling that ninety-three thousand dollars. Devlin Perkins, but he was a convert and his wife was president of the Guild for Episcopalian Charities. A Protestant prune, Dan T. Campion called Adela Perkins. Take a bite out of her and she’d flush you out like a physic. Putting on airs and calling herself an Episcopalian, Dan said, when she was just another Prod. Fernando Figueroa? Not with Tony Garcia already the lay director of the Welfare Bureau. The rich laity wouldn’t like two Mexicans. . . .

Who then. . . .

The vicar general was anointing the casket with incense and reciting the prayers for the dead. Why do people buy caskets like that, Desmond Spellacy wondered. All teak with silver handles. A banquet for the termites and the weevils. A send-off you could be proud of. The superdeluxe McDonough & McCarthy send-off. ...

Sonny McDonough.

That was a possibility. A real possibility. Member of the county Board of Supervisors. President of the Planning Commission, too. Which was always useful in condemnation proceedings. Dedicating his life to public service now after making his pile in funeral homes and cemeteries. He was letting Shake Hands McCarthy run the business. John McCarthy, Desmond Spellacy thought. He must remember that. Ever since Shake Hands became a Knight of Saint Gregory, he insisted on being called John.

Desmond Spellacy noted Sonny McDonough’s liabilities. Sonny sang “
Tantum Ergo”
in the shower. Or to be specific, Sonny sang “
Tantum Ergo”
in the shower after playing golf with Desmond Spellacy. You couldn’t outwait Sonny. You couldn’t stay in the locker room until he finished his shower. Not if you minded catching a cold or smelling bad. So into the shower. And there would be Sonny, all lathered up. “
Tantum ergo, Sacramentum, Veneremur cernui; et antiquum documentum
. . .” The memory made Desmond Spellacy flinch. “A grand number, isn’t it, Des?” Sonny McDonough would always say. And sing another hymn: “Heads lifted high, Catholic action our cry, And the Cross our only sword.” A number made for that voice. When Sonny was feeling like a tenor, he would sing “Lovely Lady Dressed in Blue.” Another grand number. “About Our Blessed Virgin,” Sonny McDonough had informed him the first time he rendered “Lovely Lady” in the shower.

He was an idiot, Sonny. An idiot who thought there was an advantage in singing hymns in front of a priest in a locker room. But a definite possibility nonetheless. And one way to bring Sonny around to discounting the funeral costs of all the nuns and priests who died each year in the archdiocese. An idea Sonny wasn’t too keen on, but if he were chairman, he couldn’t very well turn it down. Tommy would be a help. Tommy would know if there were any little colored boy in Sonny McDonough’s woodpile. Besides that raffle that was fixed at Our Lady Help of Christians. The memory was painful for Desmond Spellacy. Not one of my finer moments. Although it did get the property condemned. It would be a help knowing that Sonny was shifty going in. The question was, how shifty.