Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

"What does your son do, Mrs. Ramirez?"

"He work."

"What kind of work?"

"He work in a theater. He's good boy. Never no trouble with police. Okay I go? My sister have to have inyection."

"Uh-uh. I'm afraid we're going to have to go talk to some people, Mrs. Ramirez."

The old woman began to cry and suddenly Diatri was telling her it was okay and letting her wipe her nose on a corner of his undershirt.

Diatri hadn't been inside a parish rectory in over twenty-five years. A lot had changed in the Church since then-Vatican II, a Polish Pope-but it was all depressingly familiar: the housekeeper with a hacking cough and wearing slippers because of her bunions, heavy furniture, heavy drapes, carpets that needed more than a Hoover and a warped print of a fifteenth-century Madonna who looked like she'd rather be in Philadelphia. The room in which she left him smelled of stale cigarettes, family problems and funeral arrangements.

The priest who walked in was in his mid to late forties, athletically built, with a wide, friendly face and eyes that augered through their thick lenses at Diatri, putting him instantly on the defensive.

"Father Rebeta?"

"Yes." He had a strong grip. "Detective Diatri?"

"Special Agent, with DEA."

"Ah"-the priest nodded-"drugs. Sit, please."

"Padre, I understand-"

"You were in the military."

"Uh, yes."

The priest smiled. "Italians don't say 'Padre,' but they do in the military. Where were you stationed?"

"Overseas. You found Mrs. Ramirez through-"

"Where overseas?"

"I was in I Corps, along the DMZ."

"Sure. Khe Sanh? Con Thien? Camp Carroll? The Rockpile?"

Diatri started twisting Old Blue Eyes around his pinky. The priest's eyes went to the ring. Diatri put his hands on his lap, out of view. "If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you how you and Rosa Ramirez found each other."

"No, of course." Father Rebeta told him about the strange phone call he'd received in the middle of the night. Diatri noted it took place the night after Luis was shot on East Eighth Street. The priest said that at first he was convinced it was a sick joke someone was playing, until he heard the man say, "Okay, Emiliano, I have your priest on the phone."

The priest said, "And the confession I heard, that could not have been a joke. I went to the police and told them. They told me it must have been a joke. The only thing I could think of was to go to Missing Persons and see if anyone had reported a missing Emiliano. They said they didn't give out that information but I made a pest of myself and sometimes"-he tapped his Roman collar-"this is good for something, and eventually they let me see their list. There were eight missing Emilianos. I was able to narrow it down to five on the basis of the date of the call, and after going to see the five people who'd reported missing Emilianos I came to the conclusion it was Mrs. Ramirez's son, Emiliano."

"And you reported this back to the police?"

"Yes."

"And-"

"And they couldn't have cared less. I got a lecture about their case load."

"What convinced you it was Mrs. Ramirez's son?"

"Intuition-and the time frame, I suppose," said the priest. Diatri caught it, a slight upward flicker of eyeball.

"This other voice," said Diatri, "it called you Padre, like I did?"

"Yes."

"Tell me about his voice."

"Deliberate, intelligent, commanding. Accustomed to being obeyed. Rather calm. His syntax was revealing."

"His what?"

"Choice of words."

"What about his choice of words?"

"He said, 'Got a man here gonna die.' He didn't say, 'I'm going to kill a man.' There's a difference, isn't there? Look at the way that first sentence is constructed. As though the man's death is an action independent of his own agency. As the saying goes, hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue."

"Seems to me you're hanging a lot on this syntax."

"Everything hangs on grammar, Frank. Everything. The soul reveals itself through language. Do you remember when Nixon started using 'we'? Everyone said he was being pompous, using the royal 'we,' but that wasn't it at all. It was the two Nixons talking, his superego splitting away from his self. He was talking, without realizing it himself, about the two Nixons."

"One was plenty. We're getting a little off the track here, Padre."

"Not really. Not really. I've spent almost twenty years of Saturdays sitting in a black box listening to people spill out their souls through words. I have an appreciation for the words they choose. Like a blind man, I suppose."

"I get to see their faces when they confess," Diatri said. "That way I can tell when they're pulling my chain."

"Oh"-Father Rebeta smiled back-"I can tell too."

"So what about the voice?"

"It was Southern, actually more Southwestern. Sharper, some twang to it. Texas maybe, Arizona, New Mexico. Someone from the Deep South would say, 'Got a man here gonah dah.' He said, 'gunna die.' It's a tighter diction, less elasticity, it snaps back faster. Also, his use of 'Padre' would be consistent with that. Unless, of course, we're talking about a military man, like yourself. But we're ignoring the more important aspect of it, aren't we?"

"If you say so." Must be a Jesuit.

"Why would a man who was about to whack another man in cold blood go to the trouble and risk of calling a priest in the middle of the night to hear his confession?"

Diatri said, "Because he's a Catholic himself."

"Yes, exactly."

"But if he's about to kill this guy, why does he care about giving him confession?"

"You tell me."

"No," said Diatri, "you tell me."

"It's obvious, isn't it? Because he's compassionate."

"He's about to kill the guy and he's compassionate?"

"Think it through."

"Are you a Jesuit by any chance?"

"I was, yes. But I'm diocesan now, as you can see."

"Uh-huh. Well, you're doing fine, so why don't you think it through."

"Okay." The priest smiled. "A Catholic would almost certainly know that sacraments cannot be administered over the telephone. The Church has changed a great deal, despite our current Pope, but she has not yet reached the point of Reach Out and Forgive."

"So?"

"So, the man who placed the call, knowing it didn't count, was doing it anyway, presumably to make the man he was about to… whack… feel better."

"Okay. Go on."

"On the other hand, though the confession was not, strictly speaking, valid, the very fact of the man's desiring confession would constitute volition-the desire for forgiveness. And as you no doubt recall, desire is nine-tenths of the law."

Diatri smiled. "So he's looking eight to ten centuries in Purgatory instead of a million consecutive life sentences in the Hot House?"

"We don't speak of 'Hell' the way we used to, Frank. We speak of Separateness."

"What did he tell you during this confession?"

"You know I can't tell you that, Frank."

"Why not? You said it wasn't a valid confession."

"No, but given the man's volition, I would treat it as such nonetheless. But nice try."

"That's very disappointing, Padre."

"I can tell you that his life had not been a paradigm of sanctifying grace."

"Well, that really narrows it down for me, especially in New York City. So many paradigms of sanctifying grace walking around."

"I am trying to help."

"Let's recap. You think you got a telephone call from a Southwestern Catholic compassionate guy who was about to kill a Hispanic scumbag named Emiliano. Does that about do it?"

"I'm certain he didn't mean for me to hear him say the man's name. I heard a phone tone just before that. I think he meant to put me on hold and pressed the wrong button. He said other things, but I couldn't hear."