William Kienzle - Body Count

The meal-pot roast, boiled potatoes, vegetables, and salad-was home cooked as usual, delicious if commonplace. Table talk revolved around pedestrian topics: Dunn’s studies, Koesler’s attempts to build his congregation from the neighboring apartments and condos, Koznicki’s departmental budgetary problems, Wanda’s recounting of the triumphs and mishaps of their children.

After dinner, they continued to sit around the dining table while Wanda served coffee and cake.

Conversation quite naturally turned to the star-crossed rise and fall of Father Keating.

“Without a doubt,” Koznicki said, “that must have been the most unusual contract ever offered to anyone in the mob.”

“I’ll say,” Wanda agreed. “Five thousand dollars just to pretend to go to confession. Many more deals like that and you’ll be busy from sunup to sundown.”

They chuckled.

“Yes,” Koesler said, “but in the good old days-which weren’t all that long ago-you’d have thought Catholics were being paid to go to confession. I can remember very well the days before Christmas and Easter-before St. Joseph’s feast if you were in an Italian parish-it was wall-to-wall penitents. And yes, Wanda, from about sunup to sundown.”

“Now that we’re well past it,” Dunn said, “and we know it was not a real confession-”

“And,” Koesler interrupted, “we also know that no one else can ever know about that confession.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Dunn was a bit tired of being reminded of this. “But something’s been nagging at me all this time: What did you give Guido for a penance? I mean, that wouldn’t be violating anything, any kind of secret, if you told. And outside of this crazy experience, I’ve never had anybody confess murder.”

Koesler smiled and spread his hands on the table. “What sort of penance can you give? It’s the ultimate crime and well up there in the moral order. We aren’t back in the early centuries of the Church when penances could be lengthy, public, and humiliating-like being obliged to beg for the poor for a number of years. You know that.”

“Sure,” Dunn said, “but although I could hear him, I couldn’t hear you. So what did you give him?”

“I’m not stalling. It’s just that I’m a little embarrassed at Guido’s penance.

“We have to remember,” Koesler said, mostly for the benefit of the Koznickis, who hadn’t had his theological training, “that there is no way we-any of us-can really repay the debt of sin. If we have wronged another-stolen something, say-we can at least try to take responsibility and repay him. But we cannot make up to God what we have done in violating any of His commands. Now, with that in mind, Guido not only confessed murder, he also identified who it was he’d killed.

“If it had been, for instance, a man with a family, he would have had the responsibility to supply what the family had lost. The income, at very least. But Guido claimed he’d killed a priest. No family; no one dependent on the victim. So I considered that part of his possible debt was nonexistent.

“But, a sin all sin, we Christians have to fall back on the sacrifice of Christ. That’s why we say Christ died for our sins. The God-man offered His life to His Father for us, for our sins.

“So whatever penance a priest gives-or assigns-is merely a token. We usually assign a certain number of Our Fathers or Hail Marys, or maybe the Rosary.” The others nodded in understanding.

“According to Guido, however, he wasn’t familiar with any of the ordinary prayers Catholics routinely know.” Here Koesler almost blushed. “The way it turned out, Guido suggested his own penance- which action is not unique in the annals of the Sacrament of Penance.”

“ What ?” The explanation was much more than Dunn needed to know.

“Guido said he had a record at home of Sinatra singing The Lord’s Prayer. And that he’d go home and listen to that.”

After a moment of startled silence, they all laughed.

“If only Frank Sinatra knew!” Wanda said through her laughter.

“But,” Koesler said, “he never will.”

“Of course,” Koznicki said, after the laughter died down, “we keep coming back to that little gem that Vespa added.”

“The part,” Dunn supplied, “about burying Keating with Monsignor Kern. A very active imagination, that Vespa had.”

“Yes,” Koznicki agreed, “but it was that compulsion to invent colorful details that proved his undoing. The department had given up on the case. Then Monsignor Kern was exhumed. Then things started happening.”

“Yes,” Koesler said, “apparently, Guido felt the need to let me in on the whole thing. And God knows I was thoroughly confused at that point. I don’t know why he called Lacy DeVere. Maybe it was some misplaced sense of honor; after all, he was about to violate the contract. And that mistake-if we can call it a mistake-proved fatal to Guido … and almost to me.”

“Whatever,” Koznicki said. “As a result, the Case of the Missing Pastor was reopened.”

“See! I told you that was a great title!” Dunn exulted.

“What?” Koznicki was mystified.

“Nothing,” Koesler assured the inspector. “Part of Father Dunn’s course is mystery solving.

“And, speaking of solving mysteries,” he added, “I didn’t do too well this time out. All the guideposts were there. But I sure wasn’t interpreting them correctly.”

“Come now, Father …” Koznicki began.

“No,” Koesler said resolutely, “one of the keys was Father Keating’s upbringing. He had a comfortable, wealthy background. He was used to living very, very well. Things began to go bad for him-at least as far as he was concerned-when his inheritance turned out to be fairly modest. Now I think his parents were wise to do that. But I also think they should have prepared him for that.

“Instead, he must have been terribly shocked to receive so comparatively small an inheritance.

“Then there was the matter of his stock investment that went sour. I think that scarred him. At that point, his future was still not much different than that of the rest of us. Which, I think, is not all that bad. The Church, at least in this diocese, takes pretty adequate care of its retired priests.

“However, I’m sure Jack didn’t see it that way. And I guess that’s when he decided to take care of his future himself.”

The inspector rose and refilled the coffee cups. Koesler, not for the first time, was vaguely puzzled that his friends consumed so much coffee. They never did when he played host.

“Probably,” Koesler continued, “his plot hatched sometime after he was assigned to St. Waldo’s.”

“And a clever plot it was,” Koznicki said. “Fortunately for him, he had a great deal of money to manipulate. And manipulate it he did. The creation of those shell companies was at the heart of his plan- although the recent parish audit shows that he was also skimming the regular donations.”

“That at least he might not have been able to get away with some years back when all parochial banking was done with the archdiocese,” Koesler noted. “Except” — he shook his head-” the poor man didn’t live to enjoy the fruits of his embezzlement.”

“Poor!” Father Dunn exclaimed, “He built the most luxurious palace I’ve ever heard of!”

“Yes …” Koesler partway agreed,”… but to do that, he surrendered his service to God and God’s people.”

“Indeed it was a short-lived triumph,” Koznicki said. “It began for Father Keating the day he disappeared. As it turned out, he really did disappear. He left for Bahrain that day, leaving behind his partner-in-crime to tie up all the loose ends.”

“That’s something that puzzles me,” Dunn said. “Why didn’t the two of them just run off together? They had the money, and they’d built themselves a castle in a country that didn’t have an extradition treaty with us.”