William Kienzle: Requiem for Moses

“I can only imagine your shock when you discovered the payment to GOB Company.

“My guess is that you confronted him and accused him. At which time, Moses would have had to admit what he had done. He had read the stories in the paper. He knew that he had taken motherhood from Claire. He had never expected Claire to learn what he had done to her-the abortion and the unnecessary hysterectomy. Nor had he considered how that knowledge would affect anyone who married her. Now he knew that Stan and Claire knew he was to blame for it all. What he had done to Cameron and David and Judith was reparable; all he had to do was stop threatening and manipulating them. The concomitant hope was that they would no longer threaten him. That was the point of the whole charade. Moses had pushed them too far. Now he was trying to retreat.

“But there was no retreat when it came to Claire and Stan. It was not just a case of dumping a mistress-though that would be provocation enough. Moses had aborted their child and destroyed her otherwise healthy reproductive organ. There was no going back. Claire and Stan would always be his enemies; he would always have something to fear from that quarter. His reputation was already lost; there was nothing he could do about that. But now he faced probable lawsuits-both civil and criminal. He could lose all his money and-if he lived that long-be sent to prison, where he would undoubtedly die without benefit of decent medical treatment and without drugs to ease his agony.

“So-what did he have to lose by trying to rid himself of Claire and Stan, who were now the only real threat to his life and his lifestyle.

“Under normal circumstances, he would have stonewalled when you confronted him with the telltale check stub-but now he was in no condition-physical or mental-to do that. Also, circumstances being what they were, he was in no condition to stand up to you. He had to tell you what he’d done-the extent of his abominable acts.

“You had to be furious. You might not have known the full extent of your husband’s relationship with Claire when it was going on. But you had to discover it from the media and when you learned of his payment to GOB Company, an organization that the media has described as ‘the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.’

“One wonders,” he went on,” how a man of your husband’s savvy-a man with his cunning, amoral mind-came up with such an incompetent mob. This part is pure speculation, but this was fresh territory for him: I’ll bet GOB was referred by a colleague Moses thought he could trust, someone who was eager to lead him astray-to settle a score maybe?

“In any case, you now knew that your husband had gone way too far. It was as if my seminary priest’s glasses had spun off the desk and were lying broken on the floor. Moses had gone off the deep edge. He had operated without your control and in a debilitated state. But there was no going back; he had left a trail that could be followed by a Cub Scout. He might have done a much more effective job had he planned it before his induced coma. On the other hand, his mind might have been clouded by pain-or drugs-even then.

“But now your husband was headed for prison. And your life was on the brink of being shattered to smithereens. Much, if not all, the money you could have inherited would be spent on lawyers, trials, and appeals. Everything you controlled would be out of control. Your social standing would be a matter for ridicule. Your plans would have been frustrated.

“There was only one avenue open to you, as far as you could see. You carried through on what had been begun that Monday morning. You gave your husband a massive overdose of morphine. To further confuse the issue, you got your children and Bill Gray over and offered them the empty bottle so their fingerprints would be there along with yours and your husband’s.

“It is ironic to think that the only way you and your husband could have hatched this plan in the beginning was that he was Jewish. That way he would escape embalming. As long as the coma operated as it was programmed, you were home free. So you used your knowledge of the secret in a negative way. Even though you knew he was really Catholic, you let him go through the funeral process as a Jew.”

Koesler waited, but nothing broke the silence.

Finally, he spoke again. “I know your public reaction to this would be that it is all an imaginative fable, and that I have no evidence to support it. As long as your husband had, in effect, that suicide note in his statement to Dr. Fox that he didn’t want to live with such pain, and as long as no one can deny that he was capable of giving himself the overdose, this case will remain closed.

“What he did to Claire McNern cannot be proven by hard evidence. That he destroyed in the hospital. Nothing he did to the others was an actual crime. Cruel and inhuman-along with a number of other moral pejoratives it might be … but technically not a crime.” Koesler didn’t mention Green’s pandering for his underage daughter as well as blackmailing Jake, both definitely crimes, but events which the victims themselves would have preferred not be made public. “The only remaining crime in this whole tragedy-aside of his conspiracy to kill that poor young couple-is his own murder. But the official and final statement on that is that he died of undetermined causes.

“The rest is between you and your conscience.”

Margie smoothed her skirt, inhaled deeply, and sighed. “That’s right. He died of undetermined causes. If he had been killed, his executioner should have been given a medal. He was a homicidal maniac.”

As she spoke, she took from her purse a piece of paper, a pen, and a cigarette lighter. She held the lighter in her left hand as she wrote a few words on the paper, then held it over to him so that he could read it. It read, “Outside of a couple of minor details, you’re absolutely correct. ” Before he could comment, she flicked the lighter and set the note on fire, then dropped the burning paper into a wastebasket. As the note became ashes, he stared at her in wonderment.

“Just in case you’re wearing a recording device.” She stood and, her bearing regal, walked out of the room.

Father Koesler remained seated.

After a few moments, a staff member came in to open the panels that separated this viewing room from the next. Apparently they had been waiting for the priest to finish consoling the widow. Now they must ready the parlor to host a larger group of mourners.

Koesler looked into the adjoining room that had been closed off during the Green obsequies. On the wall was a crucifix. There had been no sign of any religious artifact in the Green parlor. If anything, the funeral home would have hung a Star of David … but no one had requested it.

No one seemed about to ask the priest to leave. So Koesler sat and thought and prayed and wondered.

Margie Green. Seldom had Koesler met a person, let alone a woman, so in control of her life. Early on, she’d recognized the ambitions of Jake Cameron. So, she became “his woman.”

However, when Moses Green came along, she saw greater potential. So she married him. But, to set the tone for their life together, she insisted on his going to the considerable trouble of obtaining a nullity decree for his previous marriage, as well as the promise to raise their children Catholic.

Judging by the rest of her life, Margie could not have been terribly concerned about either provision. But it got the marriage off on the right foot, as far as Margie was concerned.

Within the framework of bargaining-which formed the M.O. of the marriage-everything ran as Margie wished. Until, that is, Moses slipped her control and went too far in controlling others’ lives. The final and fatal move was the stupid contract on the lives of Stan and Claire.