He had two lay assistants who kept him informed and did menial tasks. They were made to understand that they were not to approach even the neighborhood of becoming spokespersons. In this department one alone talked to the media. One alone appeared in close-ups on TV newscasts. One alone spoke on the record for radio reporters.
It brought to mind one of Detroit’s most famous priests, Father Charles Coughlin, whose name in after-years was scarcely ever mentioned without the descriptive phrase, “Controversial radio priest of the thirties.” Now it was, “Father Cletus Bash, official spokesman of the Archdiocese of Detroit.”
If this distinction got to be a bit tiresome-and it did, for everyone but Bash-Father Koesler, a tolerant person, tended to understand and forgive. What he understood particularly were the difficult years Cletus Bash had spent as an army chaplain during the Korean War. And especially the injury he had suffered when, his group under fierce bombardment, a shell had exploded nearby. Of the men in that area, Bash alone had survived. In a series of operations, surgeons were able to form what, for that time, came close to being a bionic man. Still, he had little movement in his left arm. And he had lost the sight in his left eye.
But he came back. And if he was somewhat more macho than most of the other priests of his generation, he had, thought Koesler, some right to be.
Yet most of the other priests, as well as all who had to deal with Bash, would have agreed that Koesler understood and forgave a tad too much.
“Kind of warm in here, isn’t it?” Bob Meyer commented.
Bash nodded curtly. He looked around the room. “Too small. Way too small. That’s why it’s so hot. Too many people crammed in here. This whole affair has been badly run. Shows what happens when you let amateurs run things.”
“Amateurs?” Bob Meyer had been assistant director of communications for many years, through the terms of several directors. He had survived partly by keeping most negative opinions to himself.
“The nun,” Bash elaborated, “Sister Joan. She’s handled this thing badly from the beginning.”
Amateur? thought Meyer. My God, she’s the dead woman’s sister, the only close relative! Who else would anyone expect to make final arrangements?
That’s what Meyer thought. What he said was, “It is a small mortuary. Perhaps she should have picked one of the major parlors.”
Bash shook his head. “No, not a larger home. A smaller crowd.” Was he the only one who saw the big picture? Was there no one else who thought clearly?
He would have fired Meyer shortly after meeting him except for Meyer’s extended tenure, which gave the assistant a unique background. He knew where all the bodies were buried and whose closets the skeletons were in. He knew every inch of the maze of bureaus and departments in the archdiocese. Besides, Meyer was good at nitty-gritty and detail work. And Bash, dealing with the big picture, had little time to go around crossing t’s and dotting i’s.
“I’m sorry, Father,” Meyer said. “I thought you said the room-the funeral home-was too small.”
“It is too small-for this crowd. The thing is, the crowd shouldn’t be here. There shouldn’t be this much of a crowd.”
Not infrequently, Meyer found Bash confusing. This was such a time. “The crowd shouldn’t be here?”
“This whole story should have been buried. It doesn’t do the image any good to have a nun with a sister who’s a prostitute. And not just any nun: a department head.”
“Oh.”
“No one-or practically no one-knew Sister Joan even had a sister, let alone one who was a whore. Then she gets herself murdered and everything hits the fan. If this story had been killed, no one would have been the wiser. This would have been the proper size mortuary for this funeral because almost no one would be here.” There was exasperation in his tone. The tone of an irritated teacher dealing with a backward student.
Meyer’s more practical judgment told him to let the subject drop and to simply agree with his boss. His curiosity betrayed him. “But, Father, this was a homicide, with far-reaching complications. Helen Donovan wasn’t a streetwalker or an ordinary lady of the evening. Some of her clients are among the most prominent men in southeast Michigan. The police haven’t named any names, but the gossip columnists are having a field day with rumors and innuendo.”
“I could have killed the story!” Bash spoke so forcefully that, for a moment, the low murmurs stopped, and there was complete silence in the room. Heads turned toward Bash and Meyer. But only momentarily. Then the whooshing sound began again.
Bash’s statement startled Meyer. Partly because of its force, but more due to the presumptuousness and arrogance it revealed.
“The story should have been handled by us in the first place,” Bash said, returning to a semi-whisper. “Why didn’t we get the story?”
Meyer was tempted to just tell the truth: that this was not at any time an archdiocesan story. It was a homicide. It deserved to be where it had landed in the beginning-in the secular news media.
But the desire for longevity won out. “It just got away from us, I guess.”
“The nun,” Bash said. “She should have come to us at the outset. How in hell are we supposed to keep our fingers on everything newsworthy that happens in the diocese if we can’t even trust our own department heads to channel everything through us? How many times at staff meetings have I warned the department heads of what can happen when we are not on top of all media events!? Well, this is what happens! You can damn well bet your bottom dollar they’re going to hear about this incident as a prime example of how fouled up things can get.”
Meyer breathed a prayer of thanksgiving that assistants were not invited to staff meeetings. He wouldn’t have to witness Cletus Bash browbeating some pretty nice people. The ironic thing was that due partly to Bash’s pomposity and partly because the people he would be talking down to were some fundamentally decent human beings, they’d probably not challenge any of his ridiculous opinions.
Well, come to think of it, thought Meyer, I didn’t challenge him either. Never mind that Meyer studiously avoided confrontation in order to maintain financial security and a considerable investment in a retirement fund. In the end there was no question about it: Bash got away with too much-far too much.
Koesler, like the others in the room, had no idea of what Bash and Meyer had been discussing.
Meyer it was who had saved a place for his boss. This came as no surprise to Koesler, He had met Meyer often enough to know it was almost impossible to get a firm opinion from the man. He was all questions and very few answers. That he would arrive at a place like this early enough to save a seat for his boss was to be expected. Meyer had made a science of kowtowing. Koesler found that sad.
But, Koesler wondered, what could Clete Bash mean by saying he could have killed a story? What story?
No one who read the local papers, watched local TV, or listened to local radio could be unaware that Father Cletus Bash was, for starters, the official spokesman for the archdiocese of Detroit. Indeed, faidiful readers, viewers, and listeners could be forgiven for being fed up with Bash’s intrusion when it came to news stories. It was as if there could be no Catholic news or Catholic reaction to news unless Cletus Bash did it or said it.
But what could he have meant by saying that he could have killed a story? Surely not this story. He must have had reference to some other story.
Koesler dismissed the whole business.
He would have been distracted in any case by a sudden stirring in this overly crowded and overly warm room. Archbishop Lawrence Foley was making an entrance. There was no possible doubt about that whatever.