Cat In A Crimson Haze

Chapter 24

The Good Father

Matt left ConTact preoccupied, his ears ringing with the multi-voiced, remote misery of the phone lines.

The drug overdose was all right; Matt had heard the ambulance siren wailing to a stop on the line's other end.

The suicide was another matter. Like alcoholics, suicide prone people promised reformation, then recanted barely after the telephone was hung up. They were also addicted to sudden terminations of calls, and of counseling: volatile, tortured people craving both attention and the numbing safety of anonymity.

How easy. Matt reflected, to deal with woe in a generic sense, to label people by their maladies. The distance of a counseling line worked both ways. It kept the caller from revealing too much, committing too much. It kept the counselor from feeling too much, bleeding too much.

No matter how specific the caller's anguish, it always fit into a universal mold, seen and shaken out onto the table to study a thousand times before: the suicide; the addict; the alcoholic.

Matt smiled wryly.

The Shoe Freak.

At least she fit a one-and-only mold, God-only-knew what size. Her obsessive documentation of the downfall of women's feet through the ages via the fiendish agency of high heels made for welcome comic relief. He must consult Temple about some of the Shoe Freak's complaints. Did she exaggerate, in the way of all obsessives, or was there a grain of truth, stubborn as a grain of sand rolling around inside a shoe, to her mania?

Only the sound of his footsteps interrupted the faint night music, the sawing-wing-work of cicadas and the gliding passage of unseen cars a block or two away.

But . . . Matt's shoes had rubber soles, he shouldn't be hearing the faint, gritty scrape of leather soles on sidewalk.

He mentally shrugged off his reverie, reflecting that he would rather be trailed by a stranger in a car than a stranger on a street.

The man in a car was visibly dependent on the accoutrements of civilization--tires and car keys, gas pumps and street lights. The man on foot seemed a more sinister figure, a throwback: the stalker, the hunter, convinced he needed nothing against the night but himself, and what he could carry. What would he carry?

Yet . . . someone as innocent as Matt could also be out: walking. At three-fifteen a.m?

Matt thrust his hands into his pants pockets--to imply he: carried something else in them beside his fists and some small change, and turned.

A man scuffed along the street fifty feet behind him, moving purposefully, a man in a suit, oddly formal apparel for this deserted shopping area at this time of night. Lauds.

Still, a suit was better than more Gothic garb, say a cowled monk's robe.

Matt grimaced at his religion-ridden imagination and turned, unwilling to have a stranger gaining on him along this lonely street, loath to challenge or to flee.

Instead, he drifted closer to the dark storefronts, until he reached an expanse of plate glass that was bathed in a reflected streetlight.

Now Matt himself was the Gothic figure, with the strong overhead light washing his features in skeletal shadows.

In the makeshift mirror of a dry cleaning establishment Matt watched the figure appear in the window's far corner, move within ten feet, and stop.

Oh, Lord. Matt turned to look, suspicious but not unduly alarmed . . . yet. The suit could be a decade old, and the man could be a homeless panhandler. He certainly wasn't a gang member.

"You're pretty hard to track down," the man said.

The particular vocal timbre plucked a long-unused string of Mattes memory.

"Not really," Matt said carefully. ''I just work late."

"Luckily, so do I. Sometimes."

Matt could have sworn that a smile touched the voice, but the man was all shadow, and still a stranger.

"Why are you tracking me down?" Matt asked.

"You wanted me to."

Matt shook his head in annoyance. This conversation was going nowhere. "Who . . . ?"

''How soon they forget." The man stepped into the brighter light near the window, nearer to Matt than he liked.

Matt studied a lean, fit figure, one not to mess with, but an older man, he sensed. Was this was an associate of his late stepfather's, who had heard Matt was looking for Cliff Effinger and wanted to know why now that the man was dead? Maybe this person thought that Matt had something to do with that death. . . .

"Hey," the man prodded, ''I can't decide if you're too trusting, or too wary. Which is it?"

"Unless you want to find out, don't come any closer until you identify yourself."

"Ah, Matthias, and I was supposed to be such a permanent influence on your life . . ."

Stupefaction froze Matt just when he should be most alert.

The voice, the use of his full given name evoked a mental snapshot of a bland office, of cluttered bookshelves, of a tree dotted campus outside the single window, quite beautiful really.

"It's Bucek," the man said abruptly, ending Mattes misery in racking his memory.

"My God, Father, I forgot! I left a message at St. Vincent, but they were so unforthcoming, I didn't expect to hear from you."

"You wouldn't have, except business brought me to Las Vegas, of all places, and your message had been forwarded. Why don't we keep on walking; the Circle Ritz isn't getting any closer."

''You know where I'm going?"

''You left your address."

"My home address, yes, but not ConTact's. How did---"

"I travel a lot, so I check things out rather thoroughly. For my job."

Matt fell into step with the slightly taller man, his mind flashing between similar walks on that bucolic Indiana campus and this shadow stroll some ... ten years later.

Despite the other seminarians' edgy discomfort at Father Bucek's acerbic manner and stern intellect, Matt had always admired him. Until ...

"You left," Matt said. Accused.

"So did you," Bucek shot back. "I must say I was surprised, Matthias. Surprised and sad."

"It's Matt now, and save the guilt trips for somebody with a ticket to ride."

"Humph. Back there just now. I couldn't decide if you were up to facing off a possibly dangerous stranger, or just a nice Catholic boy about to get creamed."

"I can take care of myself. No one's ever bothered me on my walks home. Before."

"Martial arts. You were a veteran even in seminary. What was it? I didn't pay much attention then. Tae Kwon Do? Karate?"

"Whatever feels right at the moment, and I don't mean just that I've had martial arts training. I had that then. I mean I can take care of myself now." Bucek nodded.

Father Bucek, Matt's mind kept insisting. You expect certain things to stand: the parish church you grew up near; the Pope in Rome; the priest who was your spiritual director in seminary. You might fail, might deny like Peter, might end your oath at the ironic age of thirty-three, but these things stood. Bucek the sometimes terrifying, the always-wise, with his intellect so acute he seemed to see through excuses. Father Furtive, who knew what every seminarian was afraid to confess.

"There's a Burger King a couple blocks down," Bucek said now. "Want a cup of coffee?"

'I don't drink caffeine this late at night."

"There's a bar three blocks down."

''You do check things out, but I don't want a drink.'*

"The Burger King then. It's a more wholesome arena for a couple of ex-priests than a bar, anyway."

The fast-food joint was also more brightly lit than a bar.

Matt almost cringed under the interrogation-level lighting, but he stood in line with Bucek like a good prisoner, collected his tray, and ordered the usual burger and fries.

Bucek had a chicken sandwich, which he liberally sprinkled with pepper and smothered in mustard.

They sat at the sleek table and seats, designed to slide people in and slide people out in endless rotation.

Around them customers chatted and chewed, clattered and came and went. Want privacy?

Go slow where everybody's in a hurry.

"You look good. Matt." Bucek had immediately adopted Matt's preferred civilian form of Matthias, as if glad to inter one more reminder of their former relationship. He slowly masticated his chicken sandwich, his forehead corrugated, not with worry, but by his upward glance and perhaps by curiosity.

''It seems ... sacrilegious to call you Frank."

"Do it. We spent all those hours dissecting theology, vocation, holiness, ethics ... I guess I never knew you very well, did I?"

"Nor I you." Matt dragged a limp French fry through a puddle of ketchup he had squeezed out of several small plastic pouches, like coagulated blood. "When did you leave? Are you . . .

married?"

Frank's mouth twisted as if he had just bitten down on a chicken bone. "Oh, shortly after you left seminary. I'm a veteran ex.' Yup, married. Eight years now."

"Is she--"

"Catholic? Yes. A high school music teacher. Widow. Three teenaged sons." Bucek laughed, as Matt had seldom seen him do in seminary, loudly and at himself. "I'm still a spiritual director, Matthias--Matt. I guess."

"You have no children of your own?"

"No." He spoke abruptly, subject closed.

Can't? Matt wondered. Or won't? None of his business, no >more than the ins and outs of his own life--and soul--were Frank Bucek's business anymore. They both had graduated.

"And you?" Frank sucked on the straw spearing his plastic- topped paper cup of Diet 7-Up.

"I left within the year. The phone counseling job is the first thing I qualified for. I've been at it for six months. I like it. It's not so different from confession, especially the way it was done in the old days, in darkened booths with veiled shutters. I hope I'm doing some good. What kind of job did you end up doing? We're puzzlers for employment agencies, we ex-priests, you know.

Over-educated and under-experienced."

"I managed something," Frank said gruffly. "But tell me what you wanted to talk to me about."

"It's . . . ah--" Matt shoved his brown plastic food tray aside, leaned his elbows on the slick, Formica tabletop. "Private. It's none of my business, really, except my conscience is kicking up.

It's about Father Rafael Hernandez."

"Good man. Pretty good priest."

"Glad to hear it. Unfortunately, I had to hear something else about him, from a compromised source, but still. . . the charge of child molestation has been made."

"Publicly?"

"No. That's my problem. Father Hernandez obviously knows about it. And the man who made it does. And I do.''

"That's all?"

Matt nodded glumly.

"Surely the man's bringing charges, if he's a victim."

"That's just it. He's not a victim. He's a blackmailer, an embittered blackmailer who hates the church and anyone who's a part of it. He killed his elderly great-aunt to get her estate, crucified a convent cat, made obscene phone calls to an ancient, and luckily stone-deaf nun--"

Frank Bucek winced at this litany of evil-doing. "But he won't press the molestation issue against Father Hernandez?"

"No. He's in jail, awaiting the outcome of a sanity hearing. He seemed rather viciously sane to me when I saw him, hoping to wring the truth out of him."

"Bitter people don't tell the truth. Matt, not even to themselves... They have too much to lose."

The wisdom of that struck Matt like a breath of fresh menthol. He leaned closer, lowered his voice even more.

"That's just it. This man won't admit that these charges were part of his harassment tactics against his aunt's parish. I saw him in jail, and ... I tell you, Frank ... it was like interviewing the Devil. I can't claim the church is perfect, or that any one of us in its service is without sin, but such anger and enmity, such scalding . . . despise. I know the man's half-mad. I know he's violent, and vicious. I just don't know if he's a liar in this case. And he taunted me with that uncertainty. He wants me to squirm."

"You've told no one of this charge against Father Rafe?"

"No. I've been . . . oh, blast it. Frank, I've been 'investigating.' I concocted this story that the parish wants to honor Father Hernandez with a 'This Is Your Life' tribute and I've been calling good, earnest Catholic ladies at diocesan offices wherever Father Rafe has been assigned, trying to find his associates and grill them without their knowing."

Matt suddenly realized that Frank was grinning at him over the remains of his chicken sandwich.

"I've lied, Frank. White lies, for a good cause, but I feel like a skunk. It's too easy. I had no idea I was so believable."

"It's all that good boy training. The veneer remains even when the foundation has cracked.

Welcome to the real world. Matt."

"You're not shocked?"

"Who am I to be shocked?" Frank inquired gently. "Matt, I never had a seminarian under my direction who was so sincere, so scrupulous, so promising and so damned self-deceiving. I always sensed that you would make a terrific priest, and that you had no business being one."

''You always knew? Then why didn't you tell me? Why let me work and muddle and sweat my way through . . . ?"

''You can't tell someone what to do. Not even God can do that. You have to let them find out for themselves; otherwise, they're never free. And ... J didn't know it, but my own vocation was built on sand. It will take other men, Matt, to follow in the shoes of the fisherman now. A new generation."

"Maybe other women," Matt added, remembering the dedicated minority with no rational hope of ordination, taking theology at the seminary for themselves alone even in his day. They must number more now, and they would be demanding more equity--even Holy Orders, despite the Pope's recent, hope-smashing decree.

Frank's hands lifted from the table, then slapped down.

"Listen, Matt, put your overactive Catholic conscience at rest. It so happens you've come to the person who can help you out of your moral quandary. Call it a last spiritual direction from a man whose own spiritual direction has taken a radical change of course. First, I can swear--

swear on any saint's name you care to mention:--that Father Rafael Hernandez showed no signs of pederasty when I was his assistant pastor at Holy Rosary twenty-five years ago.

"And," he added, as Matt stirred restlessly, "I am also in a position to prove it. I can have him quietly checked out, his entire roster of parishes. If there's any taint clinging to Rafe, I'll find it.

You see, I have an obligation, too. I knew him years before you did; I shared parish work with him. Now I have a pressing need to know, and I'm in a position to find out."

"Why? How?" Matt felt a hosanna of relief rising in him, even as he didn't quite dare believe in such easy deliverance.

Frank smiled. "Fear not. I'm in the FBI now, buddy."

Then he winked.

Father Frank Bucek, Father Furtive, ex-Father Frank, winked.