The Next Queen of Heaven
At least he wouldn’t be stuck alone with Irene, that vivisectionist.
Jeremy blinked. What a day. Sister Alice’s funeral in the morning, then the long drawn out business of the reception, a quick drop-by for some after-school tutoring of Ginnie Presley, a visit to Sean. No wonder he’d fallen asleep in the chair. Wasn’t enough enough?
He took a detour down Coeyman Street, since there was an ambulance siren bearing down on him from the north, and parked in the street behind the church, cutting through the parking lot on foot. A lot of folks hustling along the sidewalks; prayer night for the Pentecostals, maybe. Folks stood near the entrance of Cliffs of Zion, but looked westward, away from their own church. The light in the sky, the sense of atmospheric activity. How sleepy had he been? The air crackled as if with canvas sails. Our Lady’s was on fire, burning from the sanctuary forward. The siren wasn’t an ambulance, it was a fire engine coming, and it wasn’t even here yet.
The people gathered weren’t Radical Radiants, they were local residents, crowding around the front door of the church, beating on it. “He’s here, he’s got keys,” called Old Lady Scarcese, seeing Jeremy. She was shivering in a house dress with a sweater tied around her waist. “Jeremy, someone’s in there, for the love of Jesus! Locked in there, maybe.”
“God God God God God—” He hit the door running, ran into it again. “Oh God Oh God. Oh God.”
“Use your keys, don’t you have keys!” screamed Old Lady Scarcese.
“No, Father Mike was going to leave the door open—”
“They were here doing Christmas decorating, I saw them a while ago. I thought they left but someone else said they saw someone go in—”
What had he been thinking? Father Mike never left the front door open. He ran around the back of the church. But the sanctuary door was framed in flames; he couldn’t even get near it. “Tell the fire guys,” he called to no one in particular. The third door was on the parking lot side; that one led down to the kitchen and up to the nave and the Reconciliation Room. On the ice, one foot went out from under him; he fell, ripping the knees open in his trousers; he scrambled up, flailing at the edge of a bush. A canister shoved under that bush, a nozzled metal canister for carrying gasoline.
“Jesus Mary and Joseph.” Old Lady Scarcese was moving faster than Jeremy; she had shuffled past, skating on the frosty sidewalk in her house-socks with the rubbery treads. She hobbled to the door, tugged at it. It opened.
Jeremy yelled, “You stay here,” and barreled past her. The light switch didn’t work; the blaze must have got at the fuse boxes in the back basement already. But the illumination from above was intense and glorious. If he were Francesca and Irene, he would go downstairs—would he? Because smoke rose, didn’t it? He couldn’t keep the rules of the natural world straight. Smoke rose, heat rose; oxygen fell. But the floor could cave in. He tumbled down the stairs into the kitchen. “Where are you?” he cried. He didn’t sound like himself; his voice came late to his ears, like a sound track out of sync.
He hit against the refrigerator and opened the door. For some reason the power was on here; the bulb in the ceiling of the fridge cavity shed enough light for Jeremy to see that there was no one in the front two rooms. He left the refrigerator open and tried the doors to the furnace room and the storage rooms beyond, where outdated statuary stood gathering dust. The basement doors were all locked, as usual. No one could be in there.
So it was up the stairs, now, and into the nave of Our Lady’s.
The stench was bestial. The chemically combed carpeting with which the altar area had been redone four years ago gave off a smell of sweet sewage and burnt hair; the parish council should have gone for the all-wool blend, but the synthetic had been 30 percent cheaper. The flames pulsed up the back wall of the church, a kind of three-dimensional wallpaper. The grand piano, chief treasure derived from Old Lady Donegan’s bequest to benefit the music ministry, was lidded with fire, and Jeremy imagined he could hear strings popping in treble twangs beneath the incoming-tide roar of the inferno.
He ran back and forth looking for Francesca or Irene in all the pews, in case they had laid down to avoid the smoke. He couldn’t get into the front third of the church. The heat was too immense, and the fire climbed steadily, even in the few minutes that he witnessed it. The choir loft? The music group didn’t use it, but would the Menengest sisters have gone there? He turned, and for an instant he saw them, waving in panic, but it was the gyrating shadow of the crucifix suspended on its chains above the altar, a crazed marionette of a holy ghost.
He saw the ax even before he heard it, and went to throw the front doors of the church open so that the volunteer firemen wouldn’t destroy any more than they had to. Old Lady Scarcese must have kept screeching that someone was inside, for the firemen weren’t surprised to see the door open. “Are you the only one here,” said Turk Schaeffer.
“Old Lady Scarcese said someone was trapped in here, and I was supposed to meet the Menengest sisters—”
“They could’ve opened the door from the inside as easily as you did,” said Turk conversationally. He crossed himself. The crucifix had caught on fire. “Better get out. If someone’s up there in the apse, it’s too late for them now.” Several other firemen in their oversize garb crowded behind Turk. Jeremy left the church. The church is burning down and this feels like an anticlimax, he thought. What’s scheduled for 9 p.m. tonight? An asteroid hitting Lake Ontario and tidal-waving and drowning half of upstate New York? It would be a vacation.
Sometimes the world gets punched in the face, it’s the world that’s the victim, and the ordinary folk who expect to take the damage stand on the sidelines, overlooked. Can’t easily take in what has happened. The crowd around the church, any one of them who might have lost their wives or sisters in a burning building, shivered in a shock so deep it might have been peaceful. What could he ever do or say to Willem ever again. Then a second truck arrived, and a new hose unrolled, and the crowd pushed back, and he saw through swimming eyes. In the front seat of a car on the far side of Union Street sat Francesca and Irene. Irene rolled her window down. “I was annoyed to be stood up by you, Jeremy, but I didn’t burn the church down to protest. I’m not that type.”
“I thought you were inside.” Jeremy reached past Irene and clawed at Francesca’s shoulder; she lifted up her hands and took his hand between them. “I thought you were inside.”
“We weren’t going to wait in there, it was cold as Siberia,” said Irene. “Get in the car, it’s freezing. We came out here and turned the heat on. You want me to ruin my pipes with laryngitis, singing in a cold church?”
“It’s not cold now,” said Jeremy.
“Surely you couldn’t have been worried about me? I never give you the time of day,” said Irene. “Don’t go all sensitive on me now. Your voice is shaking.”
“I’m applying to be a countertenor.”
“Good. Shave off your balls. You don’t use them much anyway, I hear.”
Francesca didn’t look at him; her head was turned away from the illuminated church, away from him. No one ever looked at him. He could feel the edge of her wedding ring, though, as she clasped his hands tighter and didn’t let go.
32
JACK REEVES CALLED Jeremy down to the police and fire department the next day, and with some trepidation he went. He had never been in the building before, and was hoping to catch sight of the jail cell that Tabitha Scales boasted was reserved for her. Or was that apocrypha? But nobody offered him a tour. He was handed a Styrofoam cup of motor-oil coffee and settled in Jack’s office, which had some metallic Christmas garland drooping halfheartedly over a bulletin board shingled layers deep with county law enforcement directives.
“We’re going to do a little character profiling of the suspect, like Hannibal Lecter did in The Silence of the Lambs,” said Jack. “Turk Schaeffer is here as an ad-hoc deputy, because he knows a lot of the folks at your church.”
“Shouldn’t you be doing
this with Father Mike?” said Jeremy.
“He said talk to you first,” explained Turk. “Christmas coming up, what’s to be done about the services, and Sister Alice, you know, not available to help. So on and so forth, amen. He’s got his hands full. He said to trust you.”
“Which of course we do,” said Jack. “So, straight to it. Our primary lead is the gas can found on the scene of the crime.”
“Yeah. I saw that. Under the cedar outside the sanctuary.”
“The only clear fingerprints on it belong to the guys at Scarcese’s Budget Gas,” said Jack. “Which isn’t so surprising as it’s their can. They loan it to people who come in for gas for their power mowers or snowblowers or idiots who run out of gas on the highway. The clearest prints are of one of the pump boys. Hogan Scales.”
“The son of that cracked lady, the one we found downstairs. Mrs. Loony Tunes,” interjected Turk. “You know this Scales fellow?”
“Well.” How cautious to be—and why be cautious? “I know who he is. I don’t know him.”
“I got this article from USA Today,” said Jack. “I cut it out when they were having all those church fires down South and I put it in my arson file. Couple of interesting statistics might jog your memory.”
“Jog my memory? You think I know who did this and that I just plumb forgot? What exactly am I in here for, anyway? Are you going to arrest me?” Is my sad little affection for Willem Handelaers such common knowledge that I’m the prime suspect in the attempted murder of his wife? Please.
“Sorry, slip of the tongue. Look, I’m tired, we’re all tired. I just mean maybe we can brainstorm and come up with a list of suspects. I don’t want to go arresting Pastor Huyck for torching the competition!” He threw back his head and laughed, a little too long. “Well, what I mean is, here’s the scoop. USA Today. About a third of the suspects arrested in arsons at black churches have been black. At mosques, synagogues and stuff, and white churches, they tend to be white.”
“Well, we have only one black family in the congregation, and they’re new,” said Jeremy coldly. “They came from Scranton, Pennsylvania, which isn’t south but it’s south of here. Maybe they didn’t like the sermon last week and, you know, old habits die hard.”
“You’re making fun of me, and I want your help,” said Jack Reeves, the most like a cop Jeremy had ever seen him be. “I’m saying that USA Today suggests it’s probably a white criminal.”
“Most of the county is white, isn’t it? If we had more of a race problem, maybe we wouldn’t all be so caught up in these church skirmishes.”
“Mind your mouth. This is a serious offense even if there are no fatalities.”
This must be sort of fun for him, thought Jeremy. “Look, it’s my church that burned down, too, you know. I’m not exactly happy about it. If I had any good leads don’t you think I would have called you up and told you?”
“Jack,” said Turk Schaeffer, “Jeremy’s right. We don’t have any black churches here.”
“Juveniles have accounted for forty-four percent of the arrests,” said Jack.
“So that means sixty-six percent of the arrests have been adults,” said Jeremy.
“Fifty-six,” said Turk. “You forget to carry the one to the tens column.”
“Does this mean you’re trying to hunt down adults or juveniles?”
“The question’s interestingly open, wouldn’t you say?” said Jack. “Though the way USA Today words it, better we focus on juveniles.”
“I thought we were supposed to be trying to close down some possibilities.”
“At least half the arrests in the South had racial implications,” said Jack. “The South with its history, you know, and all that.”
“Do you have any suspects?” said Jeremy. “I really think it doesn’t work to play the race card.”
“I’m not an idiot. There’s a pattern to these findings, don’t you see? I know we don’t have a very multiracial society in Thebes. That doesn’t mean we’re lacking, uh, other stereotyped notions that cause people to not get along so well with each other. It really could be what church you go to. Frankly. Or it could be other things. You know, alternate lifestyle things.” He looked at the floor.
Then Jeremy knew why Turk was there. Both as a witness and to make Jeremy feel he wasn’t about to be bullied. It was actually a civilized gesture. Almost good cop, bad cop. Still, it wasn’t easy for Jeremy to bring it up. Though that’s what both men were waiting for him to do. This was awkward for all of them. Why didn’t they have a plump, motherly cop on hand for this kind of interview? Or a nice winking hunk just out of the Police Academy showers, with his blue shirt open three buttons to reveal his manly holster?
“You mean my alternate lifestyle?” Jeremy hated to help them out but he didn’t have all day. He was meeting Marty at the convent for an emergency rehearsal.
“Well, do you know anyone who might’ve wanted to hurt you? You were supposed to be in the building at that hour, Father Mike said. You had an appointment.”
“This is crazy.”
“A juvenile, probably white, who had it in for you because you’re, you know—”
“Sensitive?” He couldn’t help it. “Artistic? Soft-spoken?”
“Come on, Jeremy, this isn’t about you.” Turk was turning a sort of gravy color. “This is about who burned the church.”
“The guys at Scarcese’s would know who came to get gas recently. Ask that Hogan Scales.”
“We did. He said that the gas thing was stolen. Someone walked off with it. But that happens fairly regularly, he says.”
Jeremy wanted to get up and leave. But what if Francesca and Irene actually had been caught inside, and been burned, or even killed? Law enforcement had a right to do its job. “You know, there are a number of parishioners who have been sour since Vatican II, waiting for us to go back to the Latin mass and Gregorian chant. I’ve heard I sound too much like Neil Sedaka to sing in church. But I don’t think anyone I know has gone over the edge enough to try to burn down the church with me in it. So if I were you, I’d go back to the gas station. Hogan Scales and his friends, if he has any. I’m not saying he had anything to do with it—anything—how do I know? But the clues would come from there.”
“But we talked to Pastor Huyck,” added Jack, “who ministers to the Scales family when they’re in a church-going mood. And he says he thinks that the younger Scales son is a bit off.”
“Off?” said Jeremy.
“Sheez, Jeremy,” said Turk. “You know what he means. Give us a break.”
“I plead the sanctity of the confessional,” said Jeremy.
“You’re not allowed. You’re not ordained,” said Turk.
“I’m just asking for general advice,” said Jack Reeves. “Are you purposely changing the subject? I want to know if you think that Scales boy is a little cockeyed.”
“Cockeyed. That’s a good one. Then what do you want me to do? Defend him out of some brotherhood of gay men thing? Accuse him of stalking me? Oh. Or do you want me to provide a model for how a young gay outlaw thinks? Is that why I’m here? A local Jean Genet?” He felt obscurely flattered and considered trying to slouch a little.
“Could you think of a motive?” said Jack. Now they were onto it, and he was sitting forward in his chair. He absentmindedly reached for a cookie in an open box of Freihofer’s.
“I can’t do this,” said Jeremy. He stood up. “Maybe there is a motive and maybe there’s not, but I don’t know anything about how that kid thinks. I hardly know how I think. You want me to lead the Police Precinct in Christmas carols, call me; that’s the work I do.”
He wasn’t a flouncer by nature but he had to resist the urge to sashay when he left the room. He wouldn’t obstruct justice, but he wouldn’t take part in some sort of smear campaign, either. Of course Kirk Scales really could have tried to do such a thing. So could Irene Menengest, who despised Jeremy. Or Sean’s freaked-out parents. Or Kirk’s brother. Why focus on Kirk? The mo
st obviously aberrant because of his effeminacy? Sure, Kirk seemed to have fastened on Jeremy. But that’s not such a crime in itself.
At the convent, Jeremy didn’t mention the conversation with Jack and Turk about Kirk Scales. County law enforcement might not accept the notion of the sanctity of the confessional, but Jeremy did. What Marty gaped at was Jeremy’s reaction to the fire. He said, “You mean you didn’t think for a moment, ‘Hey, this is okay. Farewell Francesca and Irene, Goodnight? This leaves Willem, sweet Willem free and unattached, and he’s going to be in need of a very special kind of comforting?’”
“You’re sick. Of course not.”
“Well, but the idea occurred to you later, and you cursed yourself for the lost opportunity—”
“You don’t know who I am. Even after all this time.”
“You are one sick puppy, if even your fantasy life is circumscribed by morals.”
“We have stuff to do. With Sean out of commission, we have to reduce all these trios to duets. I can’t talk about this now.”
“I should give you a going-away present. Assuming you’re really going to go through with this New York gambit, which I doubt. How about I just sort of hijack Willem for a night? There’s two of us and only one of him. Hire a van, hustle him inside, rent a motel room, tie him up a little—just for fun—give you both a bottle of bourbon and a boombox with something romantic on it. Maybe I could find some amyl nitrate for old time’s sake. I’d leave you alone, and I wouldn’t peek. He owes you. You saved his wife.”
“Stop. I don’t even like this kind of kidding. Stop it.”
“Well, what do you want? What the hell do you want?”
Sister Clothilde came to the door, ushering a seriously frailer Mother Clare du Plessix. As they made their way across the sunroom, the guys fell silent. But Jeremy wouldn’t have said aloud, even to his friends, what he really wanted. He wanted Willem, who was one of the lucky ones bisexual enough to have a choice—he wanted Willem to have wanted him. And since Willem hadn’t—or not enough—there was no going forward.