“And yet, I’ve heard Joan Blackford Hayes call him Mark.”
“Who’s Joan Blackford Hayes?”
“You don’t … Well, I suppose you might not know her if you’re not Catholic. She’s the founder and head of the Institute for Continuing Education. In effect, she’s part of the local Church administration. It’s as if she’s a member of Cardinal Boyle’s cabinet. Still, I’d never have guessed she was on a first-name basis with the Cardinal if I hadn’t heard her call him Mark.”
“How about Maria Shell?”
“Who’s Maria Shell?” Koesler assumed Maria Shell was someone he was expected to know. And he didn’t. It happened with discouraging regularity. Here he was a native Detroiter for all of his sixty-five years and there were so many well-known Detroiters he’d never met, did not know, or recognized only from reading about them.
“That’s just the point,” Tully said. “Who is Maria Shell? You tell me about a woman who’s been selected by the bishop to be a member of his team. And still you were surprised to hear her call her boss by his first name.
“See, yesterday afternoon, Father Carleson drove Bishop Diego to a cocktail party thrown by a prominent guy named Carson.…”
It happened again. Koesler did not know the prominent Carson.
“Turns out a guy named Michael Shell showed up at the party and had it out-strong words, not blows-with Diego. Then, a couple to a few hours later, the bishop is murdered.”
“And this Michael Shell is a suspect?”
“Of course we’re interested in anyone who exhibits violent anger at someone who later is murdered. It gets complicated. But Shell is positive that Diego was a good part of the cause Mrs. Shell is estranged from Mr. Shell. He doesn’t allege that the two had illicit relations … but he does accuse the bishop of alienating his wife’s affections.
“The point is, I just interviewed Mrs. Shell. Half the time she talked about ‘Bishop Diego.’ The rest of the time, he was ‘Ramon.’ Granted, I don’t know much about institutional religion, but that’s the first time I’ve heard an ordinary person-a woman — call a bishop by his first name. And you say he might have invited her to do that?”
“Yes, especially in this case.”
“Why especially here?”
“I didn’t get to know the bishop personally. But we priests do talk. So from pretty reliable hearsay, I think I have a fair idea of what made Bishop Diego tick.
“I hate to say this, because it’s practically the opposite of what a bishop should be, but Bishop Diego used people. Bishops-priests for that matter-ought to be serving people in any kind of ideal way. But a sort of consensus would tell you that Bishop Diego manipulated people.
“Although I don’t know them, from the way you referred to them, I take it that Mr. and Mrs. Shell and this Mr. Carson who gave the cocktail party yesterday are pretty important people. Rich and, I suppose, Catholic.”
Tully nodded.
“Then,” Koesler continued, “they’re the type of people that the bishop wanted-needed.
“See, shortly after he got here from Texas, our priests, who sort of have a sixth sense for this sort of thing, agreed that Diego was just passing through Detroit on the way to his own diocese. And, if he had any way of influencing it, the diocese he would be given would be big and important.”
“Getting his own diocese, that would be a promotion?”
“Very, very much so. And, as you can easily see, getting a place like New York or Chicago or Boston is a great deal different than, say, Saginaw. So, everything he did here had a lot to do with where he would be going. That’s why it was so necessary for him to get to be part of the socially and financially important circle of the archdiocese.”
“Have you seen the late bishop’s office at Ste. Anne’s?” Tully asked.
“No.”
“Never mind. It just sort of illustrates what you’ve been saying. His formula for success seemed to be working quite well. But it doesn’t explain Michael Shell or Maria Shell.”
“I don’t know Mr. Shell. And I’d never heard of Maria and her relationship with the bishop. But I think I could guess what was going on.”
“By all means,” Tully invited.
“Let me call it the ‘forbidden fruit.’ You’re familiar with the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden?”
“Adam and Eve?” Tully smiled. “Yeah, even I know about them.”
“Well, this law we have of celibacy sort of makes priests and, I suppose even more, bishops a kind of forbidden fruit, I don’t want to seem to be bragging about this. We priests certainly are no better catches than the average man. But the fact that we are-how shall I say it? — out of bounds sometimes seems to add a certain attraction.
“It’s something like the company that gets a new computer system. And the president announces to the employees that this new system is foolproof: No one can break into it and solve its secrets-”
“Don’t tell me,” Tully interrupted. “It’s a challenge. Somebody’s going to take on the challenge and try to beat the system.”
“Exactly. The owner is, in effect, hurling down a gauntlet He’s implying that none of his employees is smart enough-talented enough-to break into the computer system. In the face of that, someone is almost certain to try-maybe even succeed.
“The author of Genesis used this sort of example to begin the explanation of how evil came into the world. Adam and Eve could use this garden of paradise in any way they wished. There was only a single command. Inevitably the fruit of the one forbidden tree became the most desirable of all.
“Now, nothing in this story that suggests that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was any better or more nourishing or tastier than that of any other tree. Only that it was forbidden.
“Well, that’s what I’m suggesting here. Priests aren’t guaranteed in any qualitative way to be more attractive than any other man. But the requirement of celibacy makes them a forbidden fruit. Some women can be attracted for that reason alone. But it can work the other way too. The forbidden fruit and the tempter can become one and the same agent.
“Take Bishop Diego, for instance. If we grant that he was an almost shamefully ambitious person, his game was working quite perfectly. In a situation like that, he could become quite bored.”
Koesler was becoming animated as the flow of his argument carried him along. “There’s a scene in My Fair Lady where Henry Higgins takes his new creation, an elegant Eliza Doolittle, to a fancy ball. Everyone in on the experiment is very tense until Eliza seems to be carrying off her innocent deception perfectly. Higgins is bored to tears … so much so that he welcomes the acid test provided by another speech teacher and grammarian-Zoltan Kaparthy.
“This, I think, is what may have happened with Bishop Diego. His plan was working so well that he was willing to introduce another element-just to liven up the game. And so he could welcome his own Eliza Doolittle. He wouldn’t become so carried away that he would compromise the limitations his celibacy called for. But he would dally — just to add a little spice to his now humdrum program. What’s her name … Maria Shell? He would lead her on to a sort of chaste love affair.
“Now maybe he made a mistake there. Maybe he didn’t count on treading on the already fragile relationship between Maria and Michael Shell.”
“And maybe,” Tully continued the speculation, “that was a serious-maybe even a fatal mistake.”
Koesler leaned back in his chair. “Maybe.”
The hint of a smile played around Tully’s lips. “Now, about that Adam and Eve story: Does it say what Eve thought of the snake?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The snake caused all the trouble, I mean by tempting Eve. Did she get sore about that?”
“Hmmm. That’s not part of the story. Life just goes steadily downhill for Adam and Eve after their disobedience.”