Ed McBain - The Big Bad City

You'd think the fuckin pope had got himself shot or something.

Father Frank Clemente was a man in his fifties, wearing a black cotton sweater over black slacks and a black T-shirt. He looked a lot like a priest, Carella supposed, but he could have passed as well for any cool dude enjoying a cappuccino at an outdoor table on Jefferson Avenue.

Instead, he and the two detectives sat on wrought-iron chairs as black as his attire, around a wide stone tabletop set on a stone pilaster, sipping lemonade the good father had himself made.

"Mary was here for mass last week," he said. "She ...”

"When last week?" Carella asked.

"Tuesday night.”

Three days before she was killed, Carella thought. "We had a drink together afterward.”

Bottle of vodka in her fridge, Brown thought.

"She seemed troubled," Father Frank said. "She was normally so cheerful and outgoing, but that night ...”

He finds her somehow distant on this Tuesday night, the eighteenth day of August. It's almost as if there's a weight on her shoulders she wishes to share and yet is reluctant to reveal. He has known her since she came to this city in February, a prayerful nun who comes to mass at his church at least once, sometimes twice a week. He knows of her difficult ministry at St. Margaret's, and he thinks at first she may have lost a patient today, so many of them are terminally ill. But no, it isn't that, she assures him everything is fine at the hospital, everything just fine, Frank, thank you for your concern.

Some nuns have drinking problems; some priests as welll for that matter. It is not an easy path they've chosen, and sometimes the hardships of the religious life can seem overwhelming. The church has programs for those unfortunates who need help, but Mary isn't one of them, and neither is he.

He keeps a bottle of twelve-year-old scotch in a cabinet in his study, and it is there that he mixes the drink for her. Two fingers of scotch in a tall Venetian glass Father Frank brought back from Italy when he had his audience with Pope John last summer. Three ice cubes. Fill the glass to the rim with soda. The same for himself. They carry the drinks out to the garden, and they sit here at this very same stone table he now shares with the detectives.

The summer insects are noisy tonight.

They listen to the night all around them.

"Is something troubling you?" he asks at last.

"No, Frank.”

"You seem ... I don't know. Withdrawn.”

"No, no.”

"If it's something, please tell me. Perhaps I can help.".

"Do you ever feel ... ?" she asks, and hesitates. He waits. He knows better than to press her. If she wishes to share whatever this is, she will of her own accord. He has heard her confession every week since she came to this city. She knows she can trust him. He waits. “

"That the past and the present ... ," she starts again, and again stops.

The noise of the insects seems suddenly deafening. He wishes there were a volume, control, wishes he could tune out the sounds of the universe and peer directly into Mary's mind, find there whatever it is that has cast this pall over her, help her to reveal it to him, reveal it to God for His understanding and mercy, His forgiveness if in fact there is anything to forgive. Yet he waits.

Takes another sip of his drink.

Waits.

The insects are rowdy.

"What I mean ... ," she says. "Frank, do you ever feel that the past is determined by the present?”

"You've got that reversed, haven't you?" he says.

"Not at all.”

"You're saying the present determines ... ?”

"Yes, the past. What we do today determines what already happened yesterday.”

"Are we about to get into a discussion of free will?”

“I hope not.”

"Determinism? Predestination?”

"That's not what ...”

"Double predestination? Calvinism? Am I back at the seminary?”

"I'm not joking, Frank.”

"How can you seriously suggest that the future determines... ?”

"Not the future. The present.”

"In the past, Mary, the present is the future.”

"Yes, but I'm talking about now. The immediate present.”

"Can you give me a concrete example?" he says, thinking that if he can move her from the abstract to the specific, then perhaps he can get her to talk about what's really troubling her. For surely, a metaphysical discussion isn't what she ... "Let's say, for example ...”

She sips slowly at the drink.

"Let's say we're sitting here enjoying our scotch ...”

“Which, in fact, we are doing.”

"Here in the present. This moment is the present.”

“It most certainly is.”

"I'm sorry you think this is funny, Frank.”

“Forgive me.”

"What I'm trying to say is ... do you think that our drinking this scotch, here and now in the present, somehow induced you to buy the scotch whenever you bought it?”

"No, I don't.”

"Why not?”

"Because I didn't buy it. It was a gift from Charles. He brought it back from Glasgow.”

"Then was his buying it, whenever that was ...”

“Three months ago.”

"Was his act influenced by our drinking the scotch right this minute? Did he somehow know back then, three months ago in Glasgow, that you and I would be sitting here in your garden tonight ... what's today's date?”

"The eighteenth.”

"July, June, May," she says, counting backward. "On May eighteenth, did Father Charles know, or discern, or even prognosticate that tonight we'd be drinking the scotch he was at that moment buying in Glasgow? Did the present ... tonight, August eighteenth, at ... what time is it?”

"Nine-thirty.”

"Did this hour and this minute in this garden on this night determine his buying this scotch three months ago?”

"I didn't think it was that strong," he says, and looks into his glass as if searching the drink for hidden potency.

"I'm serious, Frank. Suppose, for example ... well, just suppose a decision I made two Sundays ago ... here at mass, in fact ...”

"What decision was that?" he asks at once.

"It doesn't matter. A decision. Let's say a spiritual decision.”

"All right.”

"Do you feel my decision could have determined the contents on of a letter written the day after I'd made the decision?”

Frank looks at her.

"What letter?" he asks.

Even the insects seem suddenly still. "This is all supposition," she says. "I realize that. A letter from whom?”

“I told you. I'm theorizing.”

“Did you receive a letter, Mary?”

"This is all so silly, isn't it?" she says. "Let's talk about the real world, shall we?" The moment passes. The topic changes. He has lost her.

She leaves the church at a little before ten, thanking him for the drink and telling him she'll be here for mass again on Sunday.

"But, of course ... by Sunday, she was dead.”

The garden was as still now as it must have been last Tuesday, when she came so close to telling him what was troubling her.

"Had she really received a letter?" Carella asked. "I have no idea.”

This time, they went equipped with a court order authorizing them to seize Sister Mary Vincent's appointment calendar, her address book, and her budgeting notebook. The warrant also allowed them to search for and to similarly seize any correspondence addressed to her.

Harding was not happy to see them again.

He'd apparently been checking with a friend who was a cop or lawyer or merely a student, and he'd been informed that the nun's apartment was not a crime scene and the cops had no right bothering him every ten minutes to ask him to unlock the door for them.

"That's right," Carella said. "You want us to kick it in?”

"You got no right “

"Listen, mister, are you defying a court order?”