William Kienzle - Deathbed

It did not take me long to repent my completely un-Christian action. Just long enough for you to come upon the poisoned expectorant and consume it. When I returned to Eileen’s office and found you dead, I knew all was ended. Unwittingly, I have taken an innocent life. And for that I must pay. It is God’s law and I accept it.

I pray only that God will grant me time for penance, penitence and repentance so that in time I may become worthy to join you, with all the angels and saints in Paradise.

Koznicki finished reading. The statement was more a letter to the deceased Sister Rosamunda than a confession. But it was sufficient for his purposes. He had Haroldson sign the document.

Momentarily, Koznicki wondered whether an attorney might use this statement to begin building a defense of insanity. It was no more than a passing thought. Guilt was the decision of the courts. Koznicki had his perpetrator. As far as he was concerned, the case was closed.

But there were other concerns that needed resolution before all the loose ends were tied.

14

Joe Cox touched his champagne glass against the one Pat Lennon held. They made a pleasant, bell-like sound.

“To the victor . . .” Cox did not bother completing the quotation.

“It was hardly a battle.” Lennon sipped her champagne.

“I suppose that’s true. Once you got into it, the battle was over.” Cox closed one eye and squinted at the champagne. There are those who may be able to tell something of the quality of champagne by the coloration. Cox was not among them. Not unlike duffers who line up a putt the way they see the pros do it on TV. Except that the amateurs have no idea of what they are doing.

Lennon smiled. As she consulted the menu, her smile faded. “Joe, did you get a load of these prices?”

“Impressive, aren’t they? But it’s not as bad as it looks; don’t forget we’ll get a great rate of exchange.”

They were dining in Canada at the Windsor Hilton, almost directly across the Detroit River from the Renaissance Center and downtown Detroit. Among Detroit’s distinctions, it is the only major U.S. city from which one travels south to Canada. And many, many Detroiters do.

Windsor, easily accessible by tunnel or bridge, is a pleasant place to visit. Depending on monetary fluctuations, Canada can prove to be a country in which one can exchange U.S. currency advantageously. And, especially in a place such as the Windsor Hilton, Detroiters like to contemplate their own skyline with such highlights as Tiger Stadium, Cobo Hall, Ford Auditorium, and the monster complex of the Ren Cen that blots out much more that might have been viewed.

“Did you notice,” Lennon observed, “that one side of the menu is in French and the other in English?”

“Yeah. I caught onto the English just before I almost asked you for a running translation.”

Returning the compliment, Lennon raised her glass to Cox. “And here’s to you, Joe, and the remarkable restraint you showed when the ‘Nitrogen Bomb’ story broke.”

Cox grew serious. “I gotta admit that was a tough decision. Whitaker opened Pandora’s box when he started spouting off about Catholic morality and the ordinary magisterium and the rest of that gobbledygook. If anybody besides Pfeiffer had written that original story, the lid probably would have come off right there. But one thing you gotta say for Whitaker and Pfeiffer: They deserve each other.”

“Still, you knew what Whitaker was trying to say. You knew about St. Vincent’s clinic, the birth control, the ligations.”

“Yeah, I knew. But the only way I knew—what the story really was—was from you. If you hadn’t told me what you found out, I’d never have been able to make head-or-tails out of what Pfeiffer wrote.”

“Still, Joe, it was remarkable restraint.”

“Well, I don’t want to muddle up what we’ve got. It’s our agreement. I’m not gonna bust that up. Besides, the story did break once Haroldson tried to stiff Eileen and got Rosamunda instead.”

Lennon shook her head in sympathy. “Poor Haroldson. Poor Rosamunda.”

“I guess. But Haroldson opened up the gates for you. It’s funny, how in this competition between the Freep and the News that, especially with local stories, one of the papers will get an edge and the other one just can never catch up. It certainly happened with St. Vincent’s. Once it broke, no one could catch you.”

“Pound for pound, Joe, you did a great job, as usual. But you’re right: It was my story . . . only because I was on the damn thing before it got to be a story. I was doing, in effect, a self-assigned puffpiece on St. Vincent’s. So I had the background on all the principals before they became principals. I guess it just went from a backgrounder in the magazine to a who’s who on page one.”

“Virtue is its own reward,” Cox said. “You had the story while you were doing your initial research and you gave it up out of principle. It would have been a first-class rotten break for someone to take it from you.”

“Maybe. But if somebody else had got it . . . well, that’s life.”

The waitress took their orders. After which they silently sipped more champagne.

Pat contemplated the massive concrete and steel of Detroit. “You know, Joe, we’re lucky.”

“Ummm.”

“I mean, our jobs . . . our lifestyle . . . us.”

“Hey, is this a preamble to another try at getting me to go to church?”

Pat snorted. “If you ever darkened a church door, they’d have to reconsecrate the place.”

Cox covered Pat’s hand with his. “You’re right; we are lucky.” He lifted his glass and squinted at Lennon through the remaining champagne. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

* * *

“How’s it going, Sister?” Dr. Fred Scott asked.

“Oh, I’m a little wobbly. But not bad for an old lady.”

Under her modified veil, Sister Eileen wore a wig while her own hair was growing back. The thought had occurred to her that in the not-so-distant good old days she wouldn’t have had to worry about her hair. The traditional habit would have covered everything.

“You sure you should be up and about?” Scott sat opposite the nun in her office. He had just taken her blood pressure, which was a little high, but understandably so.

“Not much help for it, Fred. So much going on since John . . . well . . .”

“Yeah, everything did pretty much hit the fan. How’d your meeting with the bishop today go?”

Eileen glanced sharply at him. “You knew about that!”

Scott shrugged. “Small hospital.”

“Hmmm. Depends on whose side you’re on. As far as my side goes, not well.”

“How bad?”

Eileen winced. It was difficult to tell whether it was from the occasional pain she still felt or the memory of her episcopal visit.

Scott leaned forward. “You all right?”

“Yes . . . yes. I’m okay. It still hurts once in a while, but not as often. I guess the thought of this afternoon doesn’t help.”

“You see Cardinal Boyle.”

“No. That was last week when we went over my options.”

“Oh?”

“Even in this ‘small hospital’ you didn’t hear about that?

“Well, it was one of those things that had to happen after all this publicity. I can’t really blame His Eminence. I have a hunch he was aware of what we were doing here about family planning and the like. But he was able to pretend he didn’t know, until just about everybody in the country found out. The poor man! He couldn’t really approve of what we were doing—even though he could understand why we were doing it. But in the glare of all that publicity neither he nor I could dodge the issue.”

“Which was?”