Matt shook his head. "Not now. He's not . . . wasn't . . . dangerous to me anymore.
Knowledge is power, and power is temptation. I've thought of finding him, confronting him for so long now, and so much more lately, I even wonder if I . . .if I did."
"Matt . . . you'd know."
"Would I? Denial is a magic cloak. Only it doesn't make you invisible, it makes things you don't want to see invisible. I remember a tragic case at my first parish, a newborn infant found in a toilet at the grade school." He shut his eyes at her gasp of shock, but didn't look up when he opened them again. "Umbilical cord attached. Dead, of course. Drowned at birth, perhaps during birth. It was a several-cubicle facility, children were coming and going in gangs of thirty.
Certainly, she was in there at the same time, the mother. The scandal was hushed up. The church was better at that in those days. They finally found the mother, the murderer, the victim.
One of the youngest nuns. She had no memory of the act, or any act that led to it. No memory.
All of it was so foreign to her religious commitment that she blotted it from her mind. She couldn't blot it from her body. Call it a form of hysterical psychic blindness. Apparently a lot of clergy are capable of that. Something about trying to be holy blinds one to ordinary evil. Look what I did to my apartment. I barely remember doing that."
"That, but not your stepfather," Temple broke in, horrified. "You're not delusional. Matt, and neither am I. I know you didn't do it! You didn't kill him."
Matt smiled, wearied by his self-examination, yet amused by her defensive nature.
"Tell that to the skeptical Lieutenant Molina. She'll point out that you didn't know Kinsella was an IRA terrorist, either."
Chapter 19
Phone Alone
Matt sat by the telephone, home alone.
The phrase 'days off' meant more to him now. Working nights made every day an ''off'' day, in a sense. It freed normal business hours for his abnormal pursuit of the truth--the truth about Father Rafael Hernandez and perhaps about himself.
He had been derelict. His personal life and the crazy way his past and present was intersecting--Temple and the Gridiron hi-jinks at the Crystal Phoenix, his stepfather's shockingly odd death in the Phoenix casino, so bizarrely reminiscent of the Mystifying Max's dramatic exit--had distracted him from this unpleasant mission. No more.
Now the phone receiver was pressed to his left ear again, while his right hand--hardly knowing what it was doing-- scribed circles within circles on his note pad.
"Who did you say was assistant pastor when Father Hernandez was at Holy Rosary? Frank Bucek. How could I reach him? I know it's been a long time. ... St. Vincent Seminary. Indiana.''
Matt dutifully repeated the information. Pretend, Pretend that he was writing it down, dealing with unfamiliar syllables.
He wasn't. He most decidedly wasn't, which was why his insides cramped in a cold, iron grip.
Father Frank Bucek. Once upon a time, long ago, assistant pastor at Holy Rosary in Tempe, Arizona. And many years after that. . . Matt's spiritual advisor at the Indiana seminary.
An image of the man floated on the pale blank wall of Matt's bedroom. A spare man in a black cassock with knife-keen gray eyes and a receding hairline. Devoted, energetic, another apparently perfect priest. And, long before the seminary, he had been Father Hernandez's assistant pastor in Tempe. The trail from Our Lady of Guadalupe had led right back to Matt's own ecclesiastical roots.
Father Furter, the older guys in seminary had called Bucek. Matt didn't know why until later; the nickname came from Frank N. Furter, the cross-dressing protagonist of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, These days. Matt knew what that film was about, sort of, from popular repute. He suspected that the Legion of Decency would have condemned it back in the fifties. Now, it was a cult film precisely because it was naughty, not nice.
The nickname had no significance but to display the seminarians' rebellion and harmless irreverence. Lives steeped in study and prayer need a healthy dose of mischief. Father Frank had been a straight arrow, Matt remembered; he would swear to that. He recalled the man's other nickname: Father Furtive. Matt smiled at that one, which did mean something. Father Bucek seemed to have as many eyes as an Idaho potato. He always knew when mischief or a seminarian's defenses were up. A hard man to fool, Father Furtive.
Matt didn't relish trying to smooth-talk him into revelations about Father Hernandez. He didn't like the idea of contacting him at all. If there was anybody in the world harder than parents to tell you were leaving the priesthood, it was your spiritual advisor, the one person who knew you inside out--or at least knew you as well as you had to know yourself then.
Calling Father Bucek, confessing his present status, would be the hardest thing Matt had done yet to disengage from the priesthood. It would be worse than disappointing a parent. It would be like disappointing a good father, which Matt had never had in a family sense. The good father, who was, after all, only a few steps removed from the Heavenly Father Himself.
Cliff Effinger was dead. Matt told himself, his hand still clenched on the plastic receiver long after he had hung up.
That didn't mean that Matt had run out of father figures to worry about hurting, one way or another.
**************
Twenty-four hours later. Matt sat in the same place, his worn address book open to the long-distance number of St. Vincent Seminary. That was just a formality, a crutch. He knew the phone number by heart.
In twenty-four hours, he'd had endless opportunities to practice his presentation. The process reminded him of agonizing mental rehearsals for childhood confessions. No one is as scrupulous as a terrified ten-year-old, toting up selfishness and lies and assorted 'unkindnesses to others."
Those confessions had been a variety of well-intended lies in themselves; nothing of Matt's true home life had come out. Nothing resembling it was covered in the catechisms the children pored over to prepare for each new sacrament.
Matt picked up the receiver and dialed the number, once more familiar than his home phone number in Chicago.
A man answered. "St. Vincent Seminary."
'I'm calling for Father Frank Bucek."
"Father who?"
Matt smiled. The voice was deep but young. Some raw recruit was stuck with switchboard duty.
"Father Bucek," Matt repeated. "He's an instructor and spiritual advisor."
"There's no Father Bucek here."
Was that a slim warm filament of relief coiling in the clammy pit of Matt's stomach? Relief tightened into disbelief, and almost exploded into anger.
"Check the roster" Matt suggested, an edge in his voice he couldn't quite control.
"Just a moment.''
The moment became many. Matt hung on, hating the ambiguous silence of an empty phone line. The distasteful task had become imperative. Now that he had committed to contacting Father Bucek again, he intended to get it over with, or know the reason why.
"Can I help you?"
Matt started. This voice sounded older, even venerable. Though the timber faltered, the tone was confident. Matt felt like a green seminarian again, caught behaving less well than he should be.
"I'm trying to reach Father Frank Bucek," he said. This old bird would know the name, Matt was sure.
"I'm sorry, but Father Bucek is no longer at St. Vincent Seminary."
Not there? Of course he was there! He was St. Vincent Seminary, as far as Matt was concerned. Human monuments don't walk away from their chosen environments.
"Where did he go?" Matt blurted, hating his clumsiness.
"I'm not at liberty to say."
Another curve ball straight into the solar plexus. Matt remembered the voice now. Old Father Cartwright, the sacristan. How could this ancient still be there and Father Frank gone?