Prodigal Father (12 page)

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Authors: Ralph McInerny

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BOOK: Prodigal Father
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For my soul is full of troubles.
—Psalm 88
 
“Boniface did mention to me that there was a discussion underway, and I know it troubled him, but I had the impression that nothing would come of it.”
“Father Dowling, nothing must come of it.” Amos had come directly to the St. Hilary rectory from his conversation with Boniface
and he was clearly ready for combat. “Do you have Monsignor Kelly's book here?”
“Which one?”
“The one with the word ‘battle' in the title.”
“Ah.” Father Dowling drew the hefty tome from the shelf. In it, the feisty monsignor from New York had recounted the history of the outrageous things that had been done in the alleged spirit of Vatican II.
“I think you mean the nuns in California. Los Angeles, I believe it was. They had a quarrel with the cardinal there … . Here it is.”
“Read it,” Amos asked.
“It's quite long.”
“If you wouldn't mind, I want to hear every word.”
When Father Dowling had read the account, Amos shook his head. “Bocaccio, thou shouldst be living at this hour.” A lifetime in law had left him prepared for anything in the secular world, but ecclesiastical flaws found him an ingenue.
“Apparently a laicized member of the Athanasians who wants to be readmitted is behind all this. His name in religion was Nathaniel, but he was born and then reborn as Richard Krause.”
“A troublemaker,” Amos said. “He is the one who decamped to California?”
“And is being pursued by a man with whom he had business dealings. Let me show you this.” Father Dowling passed to Amos the information Eric Hospers had downloaded from
Google.com
. “It's the name of a search engine.”
Amos nodded. “It is the rare law office now that is not equipped to tap into the data base of such companies as Westlaw. Once a lawyer needed a memory. Now all he needs is a computer.”
Amos browsed through the pages.
“Who is this man Morgan?”
“He has been here in this house. Boniface agrees with me that it is Father Nathaniel he is seeking.”
Amos hummed. “Do we have here an explanation as to why the prodigal returned is so interested in raising money on the sale of Marygrove?”
“Phil Keegan has seen those pages. As he pointed out, the man Morgan, while tried for peculation, was found innocent. That leaves unaddressed all those poor witnesses who testified to the amount of money they had lost. Often what they had counted on to provide them security in retirement. Where does money go when it goes, Amos?”
“A good question, Father. Consider the fluctuations of the market. You buy a hundred shares at ten dollars apiece. The market goes wild and your thousand dollars becomes ten thousand. And then the market falls and your investment may be worth five hundred dollars. What happened to the nine and a half thousand? What reality did it really have?”
“I suppose I could have sold the shares.”
“Yes, and then the money would be real however variable its purchasing power. But the ups and downs of the market create and destroy imaginary wealth. Those poor investors simply took a chance with this man Morgan. And, as the judge seems to have said, losing is no more punishable than winning.”
“They said he promised them they would win.”
“As any broker does, but carefully. By predicting the past, telling you what has happened, and counting on you to project that record into the future. But back to the other things. I got a call from my office on my way here. Now the grandchild of Maurice Corbett is apparently arguing that the Athanasians should at
least share with him some of the Corbett wealth. Corbett's son Matthew was given an annuity, but he is dead and it is gone. The grandson, who had not been born when the grandfather was still alive, now feels that he has been cheated.”
“Does he have a case?”
“He has hired a lawyer.”
“Really.”
“Tuttle.”
“Good Lord. So much for his chances, if he had any.”
“Dog will have his day, Father Dowling. Dog will have his day. If a returned confrere can make the good fathers feel guilty for living where they have always lived, who knows what their reaction to the grandson's plea may be?”
Father Dowling did not mention to Amos yet another factor, the uneasiness of the family that had been caretakers of the Marygrove grounds. Of course they had heard of the discussion within the community and felt threatened by the possibility that soon Anderson homes would spring up on the soil they had nurtured into the third generation.
Would the children of light become wise as the children of darkness, the Athanasians, were tempted to cash in on the value their land now had? When Maurice Corbett had bought those acres and built his mansion he had paid a risible amount for the property. Then it had been simply nowhere and nothing like what it has become. Its present beauty was the result of decades of effort, first by Corbett then by the Athanasians and the George family. Now, thanks to the westward drift of the greater Chicago area, nowhere had become a somewhere coveted by many, most notably by the king of suburbia, Anderson. And there was a Romeo and Juliet saga as well. Juan Martinez had come to the rectory and been kept waiting on the back porch by Marie until
Father Dowling rescued him and brought him into the study.
“Are Greek Catholics Catholics, Father?”
“That depends. Why do you ask?”
He asked because his daughter wanted to marry an Orthodox boy. Then he wouldn't be Catholic, Father Dowling said, and Martinez groaned.
“I said I'd ask, but I knew what the answer would be. My Rita will only marry him here but his parents will not permit it. Another girl might run off to the courthouse with the boy, but not Rita. The boy, his name is George, his family name, says he will defy his father and become a Catholic if that is what it takes.”
“George?”
“The family are gardeners for a group of priests. Catholics.”
“The Athanasians?”
Juan Martinez nodded. “They sound Greek, too, but they're not.”
“No, they're not.”
“I don't want him pretending to be a Catholic in order to marry Rita. You know what will happen afterward.”
“Not always.” He could not help but think of Maurice Corbett, whose conversion had gone deep and outlasted the marriage that had occasioned it.
“I offered to talk to the boy's father, but Rita says it would do no good. I talked to the boy.” Martinez fell silent. And then he said, his voice heavy with disbelief, “Maybe he is as Rita says.”
“Maybe I should talk with his priest.”
Martinez displayed gold-edged teeth when he smiled. “I was hoping you would.”
“Don't expect anything.”
“I want Rita to be happy, if it is possible.”
A little more than a week before, Roger Dowling had enjoyed
the unreal tranquillity of Marygrove. Boniface had introduced him to George, a man very much like Juan Martinez. Now that he was aware of all the subterranean troubles of the Athanasians and of many others connected with them, his retreat could seem almost self-indulgent. Now he felt swept up in conflicting currents, conflicts which promised to be standoffs, incapable of resolution. The promise of tragedy seemed everywhere.
In the day of my trouble I will call upon you, O Lord.
—Psalm 86
 
Hazel made him leave his tweed hat in the car when she pulled up in front of the building that housed the prestigious law firm of which Amos Cadbury was the patriarch.
“If I'm going to be in the same car as you, I want to be at the wheel,” she had announced, bumping him out of the driver's seat with an authoritative hip.
“You got a chauffeur's license?”
“I'm surprised they gave you tags for this heap. I think we can afford something more impressive than a twenty-year-old Ford.”
“It's paid for.”
Tuttle almost welcomed the ongoing quarrel as they drove; it kept his mind off the interview ahead. At least it did until Hazel
began to tell him how to act and what to say when he confronted Amos Cadbury.
“Maybe you should talk to him.”
“He'd listen if I did.”
Tuttle turned and smiled out the side window. That was one meeting he wouldn't mind arranging. He doubted that Cadbury would have any more control over Hazel than he did. Sometimes at night, he would awake from a dream about what his office had become and wonder how she had managed to take over as decisively as she had. She had dumped the folder prepared by Denise on his lap and now he opened it, glanced at the neat little index that made up the front page, and was about to close it when he saw that the paralegal had scared up a copy of Maurice Corbett's will.
“I hope you studied that last night.”
“My mind is like a steel trap.”
“Nothing sticks to stainless steel.”
He would flip through the will in the lobby before going up. “I wish I'd brought Leo along.”
“That creep.”
“He's my client. He's my ticket to unimaginable wealth.”
“That whelp doesn't deserve a nickel. What a whiner. You'd think the world owed him a living. Knocking his father, trying to cash in on his grandfather.” She made an obscene noise with her lips, then honked back at a driver who thought she was addressing him.
“I thought you were on my side.”
“On your side? I shouldn't even be in bed with you.” She jabbed at his ribs, but he had become practiced in avoiding her. He didn't like it when she made raunchy jokes. You expect that sort of thing from men, but Tuttle wanted women on a pedestal,
pure as the driven snow. Hazel had the sense of humor of those jerks in the press room at the courthouse. “Don't get me wrong. I'm with you all the way, pal. It's just a shame that we have to benefit Leo to make a bundle ourselves.”
Those “we's” and “ours” were getting to be a habit. Tuttle wished that he and Peanuts Pianone could disappear into Wisconsin for a week, do a little fishing, drink beer, and have all the pizza they wanted. It seemed an impossibly attractive dream. Once he had been free and he gnawed at his chains when he remembered how it had been, he and Peanuts having Chinese in his office, then napping afterward, garbage all over the place … it had been heaven. Now the office looked like it was awaiting inspection by the attorney general. His desk was clean, the books had been straightened on the shelves, every morning there was a typed agenda waiting for him on his desk. She even reminded him to get haircuts. Made the appointments. He would learn this when he read the sheet.
10:45 Luigi. Don't be late, he has a perm at 11.
It was a unisex shop and Luigi was someone Tuttle wouldn't want to be alone with in an elevator. Every two weeks Hazel sent him to Luigi.
“You're beginning to look like a lawyer.”
There was only the slightest trace of sarcasm in her voice. What did she know of lawyers, TV aside? She had a set going all day in the outer office, the constant murmurs of voices caught in artificial dilemmas. The plight of the wronged woman in daytime dramas brought tears to Hazel's eyes, alongside a snarl for the malignant male.
“What happened to your head?” Peanuts asked during a stolen lunch at the Great Wall. Hazel thought he was checking for himself the data Denise had gathered. He wouldn't have known how.
“Haircut.”
“You insult the barber or what? He skinned you.”
“A guy named Luigi.”
“Yeah?” Peanuts trusted all Italians.
“You should get an appointment.”
“She still there?” He meant Hazel.
“A lawyer needs a secretary.”
“She's your partner.”
“She takes a burden off my shoulders.”
“Ha.”
Lunch at the Great Wall reminded Tuttle of the free and easy, if hand-to-mouth, existence he missed. Getting rid of Hazel was a project that was with him night and day, but lately it caused anxiety. He no longer understood the procedures of his own office, so little did he have to do with them. What did she get out of it, except to nag the hell out of him? He thought of asking Farniente the PI to check her out, find out her background. There had to be something. Probably a husband or two buried in the backyard. He could do it himself on the computer, if he knew how. Hazel was always running searches on people. It was amazing what was floating around in what she called cyberspace.
“You know Google?” Tuttle asked Farniente.
“Barney?”
Tuttle laughed. Another reminder of childhood innocence. His father had loved Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, cartoon characters more real than Hazel's daytime television.
“Ever hear of Hazel Barnes?”
“What strip she in?”
“She works for me.”
“Now I've heard of her.”
“I want to get rid of her.”
Farniente sat back, foam on his bearded face. He pushed the glass of beer a few inches from him. “I don't do that sort of thing. Try the Pianones.”
“I want to fire her.”
“So what's the problem?”
“You'd have to know her to know.”
Farniente came by the office two days later. Tuttle, barricaded in the inner office, heard him out there talking with Hazel. They seemed to hit it off. A knock on the door fifteen minutes later and she brought Farniente in.
“Mr. Farniente is here about the Corbett matter.” She beamed at Tuttle. Saying he had been asked to check out Leo Corbett had been the ruse he and Farniente had hit upon. Hazel was obviously impressed by his initiative and enterprise. He could imagine the report card she would give him.
She left them alone. Farniente looked around the office. “Tuttle, you're nuts.”
“How so?”
“That woman is a gold mine. You're transformed, your office is transformed, thank your lucky stars.”
Hazel always won. That was the moral. After Farniente left Hazel said how much she liked him. “For a man, that is.” Maybe if Peanuts had hung around she would have turned him into her friend rather than his.
In the lobby of Cadbury's building, Tuttle sat behind a potted lemon tree and looked through the folder Denise had prepared, concentrating on Maurice Corbett's will and the transfer of his estate to the Athanasians. Nothing Cadbury put together could be put asunder by another lawyer, Tuttle was sure of it. He went up in the elevator with the sense that he was on a fool's errand, but
whether he was the fool or Leo he wasn't sure. He had to cool his heels until ten minutes after the scheduled appointment, but then he was shown into the great man's office.
“Mr. Tuttle.”
“Mr. Cadbury. Thank you for giving me this time. Leo Corbett of the Corbett family has come to me with a sad story.”
Cadbury nodded but said nothing.
“His complaint may seem to have no merit from a legal point of view,” Tuttle said disarmingly.
“But from some other point of view?”
“Blood is thicker than water.”
Cadbury sat there like a judge while Tuttle told him of the life the young man had led. A brilliant father, it ran in the family, but he was now reduced to working in the golf shop of the country club. Cadbury showed interest.
“Tall, overweight, glasses that won't stay in place?”
Of course. Cadbury belonged to the country club. “That's him.”
“He seems remarkably content with his work.”
“He is seething with indignation. His father had an annuity …”
“I remember that.”
He should. Cadbury had taken care of that, too. “Leo has nothing.”
“He has a job that pays reasonably well for someone without skills or ambition.”
“He's been beaten down by adversity. Think of it, working in the golf shop at the club where his grandfather was a charter member, seeing those priests in possession of his grandfather's estate.”
“Does he imagine getting the estate for himself?”
“I have told him that he hasn't a leg to stand on, legally. But is it fair?”
“What are you asking of me, Mr. Tuttle?”
“Leo is the only Corbett left. He can't appeal to the family. He is the family. Now, you're the lawyer for the Athanasian priests. Good men, I'm sure. What would they think if they knew what the grandson of their benefactor had been reduced to?”
“That is a question you might put to Father Boniface.”
“How do you spell that?”
“But I wouldn't recommend it, Mr Tuttle.”
“What would you recommend?
Amos Cadbury gave him a wintry smile. “You're asking me for advice?”
“Not legal advice, certainly not. Would you mention Leo to the good fathers?”
He didn't say yes, and he didn't say no. He got up from behind his desk and accompanied Tuttle to the door. “I am glad that you realize that there is no legal basis for any complaint by Leo Corbett.”
Another good grade on his report card. Tuttle was almost euphoric when he got into the elevator, but his good spirits did not survive the descent. How could he convince Hazel that the visit had been a big success? Not getting thrown out of Cadbury's office was a first for Tuttle.

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