Strangers

Page 12

Jack and Mort heaved the sacks of money out of the Mack and stood them against the side wall of the shuttered service station, where the slanting sleet began to crust on the canvas. Mort climbed back in the cab and wiped down all the surfaces they might have touched.
Jack stood by the bags, looking at the street beyond the end of the rig, where an occasional car crept past on the glistening pavement. None of the motorists would be interested in a truck parked at a longabandoned service station. But if a police car cruised by on patrol . . .
At last Tommy pulled in from the side street and parked between the rows of pumps. Mort grabbed two sacks, hustled them toward the car, slipped, fell, got right up, made for the Rabbit again. Dragging the other pair of bags, Jack followed with greater care. By the time Jack reached the Rabbit, Mort was already in the back seat. Jack threw the last bags in with Mort, slammed the door, and got in front with Tommy.
He said, “For God's sake, drive slow and careful.”
“You can count on it,” Tommy said.
The tires spun on the sleetskinned blacktop as they pulled out from between the pumps, and when they left the lot and moved into the street, they slid sideways before the tread gripped.
“Why does every job turn sour?” Mort asked mournfully.
“It hasn't turned sour,” Jack said.
The Rabbit hit a pothole and began to slide toward a parked car, but Tommy turned the wheel into the slide and got control. They continued at an even slower pace, found the expressway, and climbed a ramp under a sign that said NEW YORK CITY.
At the upper end of the ramp, as the tires slithered one last time before gripping and carrying them onto the expressway, Mort said, "Why'd it have to sleet?"
“They've got a lot of salt and cinders on these lanes,” Tommy said. “It's going to be all right now, all the way into the city.”
“We'll see,” Mort said glumly. “What a bad night. Jesus.”
“Bad?” Jack said. "Bad? Mort, they would never in a thousand years let you in the Optimist's Club. For God's sake, we're all of us millionaires. You're sitting on a fortune back there!"
Under his porkpie hat, which still dripped melting sleet, Mort blinked in surprise. "Well, uh, I guess that does take some of the sting out of it."
Tommy Sung laughed.
Jack laughed, and Mort, too, and Jack said, "The biggest score any of us ever made. And no taxes payable on it, either."
Suddenly, everything seemed uproariously funny. They settled in a hundred yards behind a highway maintenance truck with flashing yellow beacons, cruising at a safe and leisurely speed, while they gleefully recalled the highlights of their escape from the warehouse.
Later, when the tension was somewhat relieved, when their giddy laughter had subsided to pleased smiles, Tommy said, "Jack, I gotta tell you that was a firstrate piece of work. The way you used the computer to create paperwork for the crate . . . and that little electronic gizmo you used to open the safe so we didn't need to blow it . . . well, you are one hell of an organizer."
“Better than that,” Mort said, "in a crisis you're just about the best knockover artist I've ever seen. You think fast. I tell you, Jack, if you ever decided to put your talents to work in the straight world, for a good cause, there's no telling what you could do."
“Good cause?” Jack said. “Isn't getting rich a good cause?”
“You know what I mean,” Mort said.
“I'm no hero,” Jack said. "I don't want any part of the straight world. They're all hypocrites out there. They talk about honesty, truth, justice, social conscience . . . but most of them are just looking out for number one. They won't admit it, and that's why I can't stand them. I admit it. I'm looking out for number one, and to hell with them." He heard the tone of his own voice changing from amusement to sullen resentment, but he could not help that. He scowled through the wet windshield, past the thumping wipers. "Good cause, huh? If you spend your life fighting for good causes, the so called good people will sure as hell break your heart in the end. Fuck 'em."
“Didn't mean to touch a nerve,” Mort said, clearly surprised.
Jack said nothing. He was lost in bitter memories. Two or three miles later, he said quietly, “I'm no damn hero.”
In days to come, when he recalled those words, he would have occasion to wonder how he could have been so wrong about himself.
It was onetwelve a m., Wednesday, December 4.
3.
Chicago, Illinois
By eighttwenty, Thursday morning, December 5, Father Stefan Wycazik had celebrated the early Mass, had eaten breakfast, and had retreated to his rectory office for a final cup of coffee. Turning away from his desk, he faced the big French window that presented a view of the bare, snowcrusted trees in the courtyard, and he tried not to think about any parish problems. This was his time, and he valued it highly.
But his thoughts drifted inexorably to Father Brendan Cronin. The rogue curate. The chalicehurler. Brendan Cronin, the talk of the parish. The Berserk Priest of St. Bernadette's. Brendan Cronin of all people. It just did not make sense. No sense at all.
Father Stefan Wycazik had been a priest for thirtytwo years, the rector of the Church of St. Bernadette for nearly eighteen years, and throughout his life of service, he had never been tortured by doubt. The very concept baffled him.
Following ordination, he was assigned as a curate to St. Thomas's, a small parish in the Illinois farm country, where seventyyearold Father Dan Tuleen was shepherd. Father Tuleen was the sweetesttempered, kindest, most sentimental, and most lovable man Stefan Wycazik had ever known. Dan had also been troubled by arthritis and failing vision, too old for the job of running a parish. Any other priest would have been removed, gently forced into retirement. But Dan Tuleen had been permitted to remain at his post because he had been at St. Thomas's for forty years and was an integral part of the life of his flock. The Cardinal, a great admirer of Father Tuleen, had looked around for a curate who could handle a good deal more responsibility than would usually be expected of a rookie, and he had finally settled on Stefan Wycazik. After only a day at St. Thomas's, Stefan had realized what was expected of him and had not been intimidated. He'd shouldered virtually all the work of the parish. Few young priests would have been equal to such a task. Father Wycazik never doubted he could handle it.
Three years later, when Father Tuleen died quietly in his sleep, a new priest was assigned to St. Thomas's, and the Cardinal sent Father Wycazik to another parish in suburban Chicago, where the rector, Father Orgill, was having troubles with alcohol. Father Orgill had not been a totally disgraced whiskey priest. He had been a man with the power to salvage himself, and he had been well worth salvaging. Father Wycazik's job had been to give Francis Orgill a shoulder to lean on and to guide him, subtly but firmly, toward an exit from his dilemma. Unhampered by doubt, he had provided what Francis Orgill had needed.
During the next three years, Stefan served at two more problemplagued churches, and those who moved in the hierarchy of the archdiocese began to refer to him as “His Eminence's troubleshooter.”
His most exotic assignment was to Our Lady of Mercy Orphanage and School in Saigon, Vietnam, where he was second in charge under Father Bill Nader for six nightmarish years. Our Lady of Mercy was funded by the Chicago Archdiocese and was one of the Cardinal's pet projects. Bill Nader had carried the scars of two bullet wounds, one in his left shoulder and one in his right calf, and had lost two Vietnamese priests and one previous American to Vietcong terrorists.
From the moment of Stefan's arrival, during his entire tour of duty in the war zone, he never doubted that he would survive or that his work in that hellonearth was worthwhile. When Saigon fell, Bill Nader, Stefan Wycazik, and thirteen nuns escaped the country with 126 children. Hundreds of thousands died in the subsequent bloodbath, but even in the face of mass slaughter, Stefan Wycazik never doubted that 126 lives were a very significant number, never allowed despair to grip him.
Back in the States, as a reward for his willingness to be the Cardinal's troubleshooter for a decade and a half, Stefan was offered a promotion to monsignor, which he modestly declined. Instead, he humbly requestedand was rewarded withhis own parish. At long last.
That was St. Bernadette's. It had not been a prosperous parish when it was put into Stefan Wycazik's able hands. St. Bernadette's was $125,000 in debt. The church was in desperate need of major repairs, including a new slate roof. The rectory was worse than decrepit; it threatened to come tumbling down in the next high wind. There was no parish school. Attendance at Sunday Masses had been on a steady decline for almost ten years. St. Bette's, as some of the altar boys referred to it, was precisely the kind of challenge that excited Father Wycazik.
He never doubted that he could rescue St. Bette's. In four years he raised the attendance at Mass by forty percent, retired the debt, and repaired the church. In five years he rebuilt the parish house. In seven years he doubled attendance and broke ground for a school. In recognition of Father Wycazik's unflagging service to Mother Church, the Cardinal, in his last week of life, had conferred the coveted honor of P. R. permanent rectoron Stefan, guaranteeing him life tenure at the parish that he had singlehandedly brought back from the edge of both spiritual and financial ruin.
The granite solidity of Father Wycazik's faith made it difficult for him to understand why, at the early Mass on the Sunday just past, Father Brendan Cronin's belief had dissolved so completely as to cause him to fling the sacred chalice across the chancel in despair and rage. In front of almost a hundred worshipers. Dear God. At least it had not happened at one of the three later Masses, which were better attended.
Initially, when Brendan Cronin had come to St. Bette's more than a year and a half ago, Father Wycazik had not wanted to like him.
For one thing, Cronin had been schooled at the North American College in Rome, reputedly the most splendid educational institution within the jurisdiction of the Church. But though it was an honor to be invited to attend that establishment, and though its graduates were considered the cream of the priesthood, they were often effete dainties, loath to get their hands dirty, with much too high an opinion of themselves. They felt that teaching catechism to children was beneath them, a waste of their complex minds. And visiting shutins was a task they found unspeakably distasteful after the glories that had been Rome.
In addition to the stigma of being trained in Rome, Father Cronin was fat. Well, not fat, really, but certainly plump, with a round soft face and liquidgreen eyes that seemed, at first encounter, to betoken a lazy and perhaps easily corrupted soul. Father Wycazik, on the other hand, was a bigboned Pole whose family had not contained a single fat man. The Wycaziks were descended from Polish miners who had emigrated to the United States at the turn of the century, taking physically demanding jobs in steel mills, quarries, and the construction trades. They had produced big families that could be supported only through long hours of honest labor, so there wasn't time to get fat. Stefan had grown up with an instinctual sense that a real man was solid but lean, with a thick neck, big shoulders, and joints gnarled from hard work.
To Father Wycazik's surprise, Brendan Cronin had proved to be a hard worker. He had acquired no pretensions and no elitist opinions while in Rome. He was bright, goodnatured, amusing, and he thrived on visiting shutins, teaching the children, and soliciting funds. He was the best curate Father Wycazik had been given in eighteen years.
That was why Brendan's outburst on Sundayand the loss of faith that had inspired itwas so distressing to Stefan Wycazik. Of course, on another level, he looked forward to the challenge of bringing Brendan Cronin back into the fold. He had begun his career in the Church as a strong right arm for priests in trouble, and now he was being called upon to fill that role once more, which reminded him of his youth and engendered in him a buoyant feeling of vital purpose.
Now, as he took another sip of coffee, a knock came at the office door. He turned his gaze to the mantel clock. It was of ormolu and inlaid mahogany with a fine Swiss movement, a gift from a parishioner. That timepiece was the only elegant object in a room boasting strictly utilitarianand mismatchedfurniture and a threadbare imitationPersian carpet. According to the clock, the time was eightthirty, precisely, and Stefan turned to the door, saying, “Come in, Brendan.”
As he came through the door, Father Brendan Conin looked no less distressed than he had on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, when they had met in this office to discuss his crisis of faith and to search for ways to reestablish his belief. He was so pale that his freckles burned like sparks on his skin, and by contrast his auburn hair looked more red than usual. The bounce had left his step.
“Sit down, Brendan. Coffee?”
“Thank you, no.” Brendan bypassed the tattered Chesterfield and the Morris chair, slumping in the sagbottomed wingback instead.
Did you eat a good breakfast? Stefan wanted to ask. Or did you just nibble at some toast and swill it down with coffee?
But he did not want to seem to be mothering his curate, who was thirty years old. So he said, “You've done the reading I suggested?”
“Yes.”
Stefan had relieved Brendan of all parish duties and had given him books and essays that argued for the existence of God and against the folly of atheism from an intellectual point of view.
“And you've reflected on what you've read,” Father Wycazik said. "So have you found anything so far that . . . helps you?"
Brendan sighed. Shook his head.
“You continue to pray for guidance?”
“Yes. I receive none.”
“You continue to search for the roots of this doubt?”
“There don't seem to be any.”
Stefan was increasingly frustrated by Father Cronin's taciturnity, which was utterly unlike the young priest. Usually, Brendan was open, voluble. But since Sunday he had turned inward, and he had begun to speak slowly, softly, and never at length, as if words were money and he a miser who begrudged the paying out of every penny.
“There must be roots to your doubt,” Father Wycazik insisted. "There must be something from which doubt's growna seed, a beginning."
“It's just there,” Brendan muttered, barely audible. "Doubt. It's just there as if it's always been there."
"But it wasn't: you did believe. So when did doubt begin?
Last August, you said. But what sparked it? There must've been a specific incident or incidents that led you to reevaluate your philosophy."