Bartholomew took several deep breaths. Then the wrinkled hand moved to find the top of Scott's head, patted the soft blond hair. With two fingers he traced Scott's eyebrows, nose, cheeks, left ear, chin; finally the tip of one finger touched each lip. Bartholomew's hand fell away and tears coursed down his cheeks. He cried silently. Scott moved even closer to the old man, put an arm around his shoulder, and hugged him tenderly. No two-year-old clung tighter to Scott's neck than Bartholomew did at that moment. Scott soothed him, murmured kind words, rubbed his back with one hand, held him tight with the other.
After several minutes I heard Bartholomew murmur, “Thank you.” They unclinched. Bartholomew pulled out his enormous hanky, yellowed from years of overuse and inadequate bleaching. Scott remained sitting close to him, and after Bartholomew cleaned himself up, Scott put his right arm around his shoulder, took Bartholomew's frail, wrinkled hand, and wrapped it in his own. The old man laid his head back on Scott's shoulder, using it for a head rest.
I explained to Bartholomew about checking each person's story and the need to find the person Sebastian met with each week. He gulped, squeezed Scott's hand, and nodded. He told us he'd gone downstairs to use the john, then stepped over for a few words with Father Sebastian, the only person who took time for him, didn't laugh at him behind his back. He knew he kept the job as Faith's treasurer because Neil secretly checked his books and reports each week.
“I don't need his pity. I'm eighty-two years old, but I know my work.” There was a fierce professional pride in his tone.
He told us Father Sebastian was the only one who ever visited
him. His parents and sisters died years before and his nephews lived far away, and they'd never been close to begin with.
“Father Sebastian wanted me to get out more. He told me I should volunteer to help people with AIDS. I was scared. I know that's stupid. He told me I was silly. I got mad at him the last time he visited. So I had to go see him Sunday, downstairs. I had to know if he was angry with me. He wasn't. He smiled so nicely. But he told me I had my health, and I should help others, and he'd be taking me to Howard Brown Memorial Clinic this week.” He hung his head and squeezed Scott's hand. “I said I couldn't. His kindness made me feel so guilty. I said horrible things, then left as quick as I could.” He gulped, but held back the tears. He sat straighter in the chair. “I'm going this week. I'll do whatever I can for them. I've got to make it up to him, and I'll help you boys too.”
He grinned for the first time. I saw the gleam of his denture clips. He glanced around the room and leaned forward confidentially.
“Priscilla,” he whispered. “I've heard her. She talks violence, destruction, and murder. She threatened Father Sebastian last Sunday before Mass. Threatened to kill him, I don't know why. She scares me. Usually she ignores me, like I'm deaf and slime, but I hear.” He tapped his right ear. “I hear perfectly.”
He leaned back, perhaps exhausted by this confidence. I thanked him. Whether from lack of knowledge, trust, or energy, he told us no more. We chatted briefly, then walked together to the door. We offered to get the car and drop him someplace, but he refused, insisting he could make it on his own. He and Scott hugged briefly; then the old man disappeared down the street.
We walked back to Scott's. After the bitter cold earlier in the winter, the forty-degree weather in January caused us to linger as if it were seventy in June. I had Monday off in honor of Martin Luther King's birthday, but the next day's schedules dictated two cars so we made the return trip to River's Edge.
We decided to stop by the rectory to see if the good Father Clarence was all snug in his suburban bed. Perhaps we might
follow him to the trysting place Frank Murphy had posited. We arrived at the church just after midnight. In the parking lot a red Corvette nestled between two black Chevies. A gray Toyota pickup truck sat three parking spaces away from them. The only light in the rectory shone from the front windows on the first floor.
“Late-night visitors?” Scott said.
“I guess priests can stay up late and party,” I said.
We parked halfway down Altadena Terrace, close enough to see who came and went. After fifteen minutes Scott said, “What if the neighbors see us out here and call the police?”
I pointed to the ramshackle, run-down houses around us. “On this side of town they won't notice, of they'll think we're cops.”
“In a Porsche?”
“Okay. They'll think were drug dealers, which is even better. They'll know better than to fuck with us.”
After half an hour he said, “This is stupid.”
I said, “Haven't you ever seen them do surveillance on TV? Before the commercial comes on they always get a lucky break.”
He sighed. “We couldn't see anybody's face from back here anyway.”
I started the car and moved us a quarter of a block closer.
After forty-five minutes his fidget index hit its limit. “Tell me why this is a sane thing to be doing! It may not be zero outside, but I'm starting to get cold. This isn't summer here.” The annoyed thrum at the back of his voice told me I'd better come up with some solid logic quick. He fixed his blue eyes on mine.
“A few more minutes?”
“Fifteen. Solid limit. We leave no matter what.”
I shrugged grudging agreement.
Fourteen minutes later the rectory door opened.
“Look.” Scott pointed.
Still buttoning his coat, and in nonclerical pants, Clarence hurried across the parking lot to his car.
He tore off down the road. I made the Porsche purr after him. Down 161st Street to Wolf Road, through Mokena, right on Front Street to School House Road, a jog through New Lenox to Laraway Road, over to Route 52, then down to Manhattan. Just inside the little town he turned to the right toward a cluster of two-story apartments houses a block from the highway.
I'd closed the distance significantly on entering town. He parked in the driveway at the first apartment house on the north end of the complex. The door opened before he knocked.
“A sick parishioner?” Scott said.
“Not his parish. I saw a woman in a very short and sexy nightie. I don't think this visit was to bring her communion.”
“A girlfriend?”
“Not unheard of.”
“For a priest?”
“There's got to be
some
heteroxsexual priests. Then again, I'm not sure.” I told him my brother Glen's story about the old priest who performed the wedding ceremony for him and Jeannette. The priest spent most of his time insisting that all the women in the parish loved him.
“Setting up his heterosexual credentials?” Scott asked.
“Sort of. Except Glen said he ruined the whole effect when he spent the entire reception solicitously checking out how much the handsomest young men had drunk.”
“Another fag priest,” Scott said.
“Probably. Glen said it was embarrassing when the priest tried to be chummy. It was as if the guy thought a sex spy from the chancery might be checking up on him.”
The lights in the downstairs apartment flicked off one by one. I doubted if Father Clarence had to worry about his hetero credentials. Barely hidden at the edge of a denuded cornfield, I didn't want to wait for departure. If the Manhattan police stopped to ask questions, we'd be hard pressed to explain our presence.
Back the way we came and home again home. “So he's got a
girlfriend,” Scott said as we sat at the light at Gouger Road and Route 30.
I felt sorry for the guy stuck in his vows, no one to hold him in those special times, good or bad. Yet he'd gone into it open-eyed. No one forced him to be a priest, as they had in the Middle Ages.
In the car on the way home Scott turned frisky and rather bawdy, even for a Porsche on darkened back roads. I managed to get us home with most of our clothes on. I made my mistake when I pulled the car onto the darkened side of the house. Love in a Porsche doesn't have a lot to say for it. Even with our athletic acrobatics, discomfort reigned.
Â
We did a serious workout for two hours Monday morning. After showers we had stale Cheerios and milk almost ready to turn sour for breakfast.
“Great meal,” Scott commented.
“You didn't have to cook it. I didn't burn it. That equals gourmet around here. Shut up and eat.”
He had an eleven o'clock photo session at a cable TV station in Forest Park. He left and I drove to the River's Edge police station. Smack in front of the place sat a police car with four flat tires and a cop sitting behind the wheel staring ahead. He never blinked as I walked past him, up the steps, and into the police station. Inside I asked Frank what that was all about.
He said, “A mistake,” and offered no further explanation.
I told him about Father Clarence's nocturnal wanderings. Frank raised an eyebrow and chuckled but said he didn't imagine it had anything to do with Father Sebastian. He didn't want to doubt my nephew, but he hadn't been able to establish any connection between Clarence and Sebastian's death.
“I did find out some strange stuff.” We walked to the gray conference room. Today the radiator gave off sporadic clangs. He tipped his chair back, leaned his shoulders and head against the wall, and steepled his fingers. Then he rubbed them along the sides of his nose.
“Good news, bad news, what?” I asked.
“Odd news. Information missing. I had to be very discreet. I tried a courtesy call to the cops in charge of the case. Not the least interested in what I had to say.” The cops had sounded bored and put upon but had also evaded every question. Usually the city and suburban cops cooperated fairly closely. Many of them had trained at the Chicago Police Academy together and knew one another from way back. Most little suburbs didn't have the cash or manpower to create an enormously expensive training program for one or two cops. Instead they sent them to Chicago, where they got some of the best training in the country.
“Got nowhere with them,” Frank said. “Wouldn't even let me check the files. I backed off quickly. They wanted to know my interest. I stalled them with a bullshit story about suburban cop paperwork. I don't think they bought it.”
Then he'd tried the Medical Examiner's office. An old friend worked there. Even this guy hesitated to talk, but finally he said one thing. In putting the files in order at the end of the week, he'd noticed the Father Sebastian report out of place. A quick inspection told him some documents were missing. He checked with a number of co-workers. No one had seen anything.
Frank did his two-handed nose rub again. A few reports remained, mostly lab work that must have arrived after the other materials in the file had been taken. In fact, his friend had gotten the blood report back from the lab just half an hour before Frank called.
“Father Sebastian tested positive for the AIDS antibodies,” Frank said. “I guess I never really thought about there being gay priests. Of course I never really think about priests much at all.”
“He was sure about the test?”
“Yep.”
“That couldn't have been what killed him?”
“Nope, but what did is no longer in the files, if it ever was.”
“Your friend make a stink?”
“He reported it to his superior. The woman took the file and
said she'd investigate. My friend's worked in Chicago long enough to smell a cover-up. He says this one stinks from Evanston to Gary. âSome heavy shit is going down' is the way he put it.”
I told Frank what I'd learned from the Faith group on Sunday.
“If he took his commitment to celibacy seriously, as they claim, how come he was HIV positive?” Frank asked.
“Could have had a blood transfusion. Or maybe they didn't know him as well as they thought,” I said. “I'd like to find the guy Prentice said he met every Sunday.”
“Good luck,” Frank said. “So far you haven't found anything to indicate Sebastian's death wasn't due to natural causes. I don't think you or I can do anything about the missing file stuff. I can tell you one thing. The initial cop on the case and his partner got called off it within days. That rarely happens. You might try them.” He gave me their names.
I left wondering how Sebastian had become HIV positive. Somebody had to be close enough to him to know. Maybe one or more of the six Faith board members had held back information. I wondered if we had enough to pressure Clarence further. And I wanted to talk to the rest of the Faith board about their trysts in the sacristy Sunday.
Late that morning I drove to Scott's. I parked my black pickup truck among the BMWs, Cadillacs, and limousines. I greeted Alfred, the doorman, and rode the penthouse elevator up. I spent an hour waiting for Scott in the music room listening to the Minneapolis Concert CD by Ed Tricket, Anne Mayo Muir, and Gordon Bok.
For lunch we grabbed a corned beef sandwich at the corner deli and hurried to an appointment at the
Gay Tribune
. Their office existed in the hot new area of town along the Halsted Street strip between North Avenue and Fullerton.
Inside, chaos reigned. Broken glass from the shattered picture window scrunched underfoot. Plastic and metal computer fragments lay strewn over the landscape. Heaps and drifts of paper continued to cascade as people sifted through them. All the desks sat upright, but the drawers were dumped out onto the floor.
Monica sat on top of a stepladder, cigarette holder clamped in her lips. Youthful male and female underlings scurried about. Occasionally she'd be asked a question. She rarely did more than point. A phone rang and Monica picked a cordless model off the top of an eight-foot bookcase. We heard no part of her conversation. She wore dark blue bib overalls with a pink silk
blouse underneath, along with Air Jordan tennis shoes. No matching purse in sight.
A kid who couldn't have been more than fourteen demanded to know what we wanted. She wore orange plastic glasses, baggy pants, a Mohawk haircut, and a paint-spattered T-shirt that said EAT THE WHALES. I asked to talk to Monica. She said, “Mom's too busy. Can't you see we had a break-in? Unless you're cops.” She peered at us. “Not ugly enough. Fuck off.”
Only twelve feet wide, the room ran the length of the building, maybe fifty feet deep. Monica caught sight of us from her perch halfway down the room. With languid grace but surprising rapidity, she descended the ladder and closed the distance between us. The child stalked off without a word or look passing between them.
“The third-floor office is undamaged,” Monica said. “We can talk there.” She led the way up narrow stairs. Large holes gaped in the walls as we climbed. She pointed to them. “From the last break-in, not this one.”
The glimpse I got of the second floor made the first look pristine. They hadn't started cleaning here. The attackers'd covered the walls and mounds of debris with splotches of white and green paint. If you could cut it, they had. If it was breakable, it was in pieces. She led us into an elegant third-floor office.
“Quadruple-locked and burglar-proof up here,” she said. “Because of Priscilla living in back, we put in extra protection. It's on order for downstairs.”
Photographs by JEB lined one of the walls. The fourth had a picture window that looked out on Halsted Street. Monica pointed to several indentations in the picture window. “Almost shot up the place a couple of months ago. Fortunately I had them install bulletproof glass when I moved in. You can't be too careful when you're a gay businesswoman. At least I know some stupid kid with his dad's assault rifle can't blow me away.”
We stepped around a cantilevered desk crafted of rosewood burl with inlaid zinc zigzags. She seated us in comfortable chairs around a glass-topped coffee table. On the corner of the
table nearest to where I sat was the
Cunt Coloring Book
by Tee Corinne, with an open box of Crayolas carefully placed to let the looker observe the cover completely.
“You've had break-ins before?” I asked.
“Twice, although this is the worst. I'm planning to make it the last. And today is deadline. We'll have some computers working soon. The paper will be out on time.”
“Who did it?” I asked.
She pulled a cigarette from a cookie jar on top of the coffee table and a silver cigarette holder from a clip on the side. She organized these and lit the cigarette before she answered. “Who knows? Jealous lesbians? Envious gay men? Threatened straights I've put out of business? This is a sideline, a hobby for me, but somebody's going to pay.” She spoke very calmly for all her threatening words. Her violet eyes met ours as she puffed contentedly.
“You're here about Sebastian.” She didn't wait for confirmation. Her eyes got misty. “He knew people, understood them, not in some saintly, otherworldly way but like a real person, looking at real foibles and major character flaws, and yet he still cared about them. He's the first professionally religious personâpriest, minister, nun, whateverâI ever met who was actually a holy person, a good, kind, loving Christian person. And some bastard murdered him.” The glint of tears appeared in her eyes.
“How can you be sure it was murder?”
“I know bullshit from cops when I see it. Plus my contact in the chancery is very reliable.”
“Like I said last night, we need to talk to your source,” I said.
“I'm trying to get him to agree. I'll need more time.”
We told her about Sebastian testing positive for HIV antibodies.
“Test can't be right. He didn't have AIDS. I'd know. He couldn't have hidden it from me.”
“Maybe he didn't know,” Scott said.
“Possible,” she conceded. She mushed out her cigarette in an
ashtray large enough to hold half of Lake Michigan. She sighed. “You're here because you found out I went downstairs that Sunday.” Stated, not asked. “I figured, with you talking to the troops, it'd come out. I am not universally loved.” I liked her melodious and soothing voice.
“I went down to talk to him about getting rid of Bartholomew as treasurer. The man is a menace.” She recounted a string of the old man's sins as treasurer. “I'm a businesswoman,” she finished. “I can't stand incompetence, no matter how kind we should be to the old coot.”
Sebastian had refused, saying the old man needed to feel wanted. The group would survive any blunders he made. It wasn't as if Bartholomew were stealing from them. “My last words to him were petty, harsh ones about a totally unimportant issue.” She sighed. “Life's a bitch.”
After a few moments she continued. “I've never met a more powerful or strong-willed person than Sebastian. Yet he never raised his voice, put himself forward, or joined a faction.” She'd neither seen nor heard anyone else making their way to see the priest that day.
I explained about trying to find who Sebastian met at the bar. Who he might be and why Sebastian met him.
Monica thought. Inserted another cigarette in the holder and began puffing. “All I know is that if anybody ever talked about going for a drink, he always suggested Roscoe's. We went a few times. He never met anybody when I was there.”
It wasn't much, but that's all she gave us. I got a photograph of Father Sebastian from her. I wanted to show it at Roscoe's: a slim chance, but at least a place to start. Monica had to get back to the paper. She told us she'd send Priscilla up to talk to us. She picked up the phone receiver, punched several buttons, and requested Priscilla's presence.
A few minutes later Priscilla stomped in. She did not sit. She gripped the back of a chair hard enough to turn her knuckles white.
“What is it?” she demanded after Monica left. “I've got work to do.”
“Did you know Sebastian tested positive for the AIDS anti-bodies?” I asked.
“The old bastard had AIDS? I don't believe it. He was so moral. I can't believe he'd ever have sex with anybody. Who'd want to? Still, he was the only politically correct male I knew. Don't know how he pulled that off.”
“Why'd you go downstairs to see Sebastian on Sunday?”
The question set her off. For five minutes she berated us as incompetent males and unwanted outsiders. Scott got up and walked to the window halfway through the tirade.
When she paused for breath, I said, “Did you kill him?”
She switched instantly from macho pig insults to deadly calm. “You heard of Lesbians for Freedom and Dignity?”
I nodded.
“We don't put up with insults from men.”
“It wasn't an insult, just a question.”
She waved a finger in my face. “You'll be sorry, fucker,” she said and stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
“I refuse to deal with that shit,” Scott said, coming back from the window.
We walked downstairs. The cleaners had reached the second floor by now, but it still looked to be unusable for days. Downstairs, a few computers hummed, repair trucks sat outside, tie-clad men peered into the insides of terminally ill machines. Repair men in hours, that was power and money at work.
We'd promised to pick up Bartholomew at two. He had given us his phone number and address the day before. We called ahead to make sure he was home. No answer. We drove over. Bartholomew lived above a straight bar on Lincoln Avenue, just south of Diversey. No Bartholomew waiting outside, as he promised the day before. We banged on the downstairs door and pressed the buzzer. Still no answer. We tried the first-floor
tavern. Behind the bar, a bald little guy with a towel draped over his left shoulder had his bookie receipts spread out on the bar top. A cigarette with a one-inch ash dangled from his lips. I watched him as he deftly moved his beer glass two seconds before the ash dropped. The ash received a swipe with a fist, and the beer returned to its rightful place. “Help youse?” he said, not looking up.
We stood on the other side of the bar, waiting. Finally he looked up at us. He gaped. “Scott Carpenter.” His cigarette plopped into his beer. “Whatever you want, it's on the house,” he said.
“We're looking for the old man upstairs, Bartholomew Northridge. Know him?”
“You mean the cranky old fruit?”
Scott tapped him gently on his flabby chest. “You mean the kind old gay man,” he said softly.
The bartender looked at the finger and smiled weakly. “Yeah, sure, sorry. Who's prejudiced?”
“Have you seen him?” I asked.
“Nope. Should be up there. Most days he stops in here around noon. Not always.”
With only a little prodding from sports hero Scott Carpenter, the guy gave us his key. Again he offered us any free drink in the house.
“Another time,” Scott told him.
A long single flight of linoleum-covered steps led up to Bartholomew's room. The linoleum might have been bright green upon installation fifty years ago, but no longer. We called from the outside the door, but no one answered. Unlocking the door and entering, we found Bartholomew at the kitchen table staring into a cold cup of coffee.
It took little more than a glance to take in his whole apartment. His living space depressed me. The walls were bare. Everything was clean and spartan. A few carefully mended kitchen chairs sat under a card table. The single bed had an old army blanket, tucked in with military precision, as its only
covering. A stack of gay porno magazines peeked from under the side of the bed. Two library books, Greenberg's
The Construction of Homosexuality
and
After the Ball
, by Kirk and Madsen, sat on the nightstand. The only light in the room came from a floor lamp any self-respecting garage sale would reject. An open doorway revealed a spotless john.
He raised two film-covered eyes to us. “I can't,” he whispered.
I stayed in the doorway. Scott sat in a creaking chair across from Bartholomew. He took one gnarled old hand from around the coffee cup and held it between his own.
“What's wrong, Bartholomew?” he murmured.
“I'm scared,” the old man mumbled. “Scared I'll catch it. Afraid to die.”
Patiently Scott explained how you can or can't catch AIDS. He added, “We're all afraid to die, Bartholomew. You can't stop living out of fear. You have to volunteer. To honor Father Sebastian's memory, if nothing else.”
The old man stared out the window at the brick wall of the building next door for the longest time. Scott waited, unmoving and silent. His hands around the other man's gave warmth and courage. The old man's pained eyes met Scott's. The deep blue lamps of my lover radiated their warmth.
“I need my coat,” Bartholomew said.
We walked him into the clinic. A bright-eyed young man chattering happily took Bartholomew from us and led him away. As he always did when he stopped at the clinic, Scott checked the roster of people with AIDS in area hospitals. He took notes on several new ones and talked to the volunteer to be sure they'd updated his list. Scott visited every person with AIDS in every Chicago hospital, as long as they didn't refuse to see him.
As we left, Bartholomew rushed back to us. “I need to talk to the two of you. I know something aboutâ” He broke off as an attractive young attendant walked up to us.
He smiled at Bartholomew. “I have a blind person with AIDS who needs to be read to this week. We can begin your training
later. For now, we have a million envelopes we need help with stuffing.” He gave the old man a genuinely warm and caring smile.