Halo for Satan Read online

  HAROLD BROWNE - HALO FOR SATAN

  BOBBS-MERRILL EDITION $2-50

  For Allen Browne

  1

  He was a big man, big all over, wrapped in a tan Palm Beach suit that appeared to have been cleaned and pressed no more than ten minutes before. He stood with his back against the smoke-blackened front of a florist shop directly across the street from the rectory entrance, just standing there without a thought in his head or a care in the world while he worked on his front teeth with a toothpick, using a strong wrist movement.

  The brim of a crisply new Panama shielded his round firmly fleshed face from the midmorning May sunshine, but I caught the dull white shine of eyes watching me from under hooded lids across the distance.

  My conscience was clear, so being stared at didn’t change my pulse rate. He could have been a cop in plain clothes or a bill collector loafing on company time or only a private citizen with nothing better to do than lean against buildings and make honest folks nervous by giving them the hard eye. I wouldn’t have noticed him particularly if the clothing he was wearing hadn’t seemed a little out of place for this time of year.

  I opened one of a pair of heavy screen doors, went through and into the rectory entrance hall, shadowy and dim, across that and through an arched opening into a large square room paneled in glossy walnut and divided by a counter-top railing in the same wood. On my side of the railing, their backs to the windows, was a row of the kind of chairs you find in waiting rooms everywhere and a bare wooden bench that looked about half as comfortable as the chairs. The room smelled a little, I thought, like the Sunday school hall I hadn’t been in since my twelfth birthday. That had been twenty years ago, though, and I might be mistaken about it.

  I went over and put an elbow on the counter and said, “Good morning,” to an angular woman in her sixties who was sitting at a typewriter stand at right angles to a small PBX board.

  She was wearing an Oxford-gray suit, very severe in the lines, and a spotless white blouse featuring a lacy jabot. There were wrinkles in her face, not too many and not too deep, and her hair was a good honest shade of gray drawn tightly back into a roll at the nape of her neck. With all of this, her eyes were youthful and sharp and there was strength in the sharp thrust of her chin and the high-arched lines of a rather prominent nose.

  She stood up without creaking and came over to the railing opposite to where I was standing. Her thin lips, colorless, moved a little in an impersonal smile. “Good morning. May I help you?”

  “Yes,” I said. I brought out my wallet and found one of my cards, with Private Investigations in small neat script in the lower left-hand corner, and handed it to her. “Bishop McManus. I have an appointment.”

  The card seemed to fascinate her. She stood there staring down at it, her dry lips moving a little as she silently repeated the printed words. There was faint color in her cheeks where color hadn’t been a moment before and her breathing was a trifle unsteady. I wondered what all this was leading up to.

  Finally she put the card down on the counter and pushed it gently toward me with a short-nailed forefinger. Her faded blue eyes were having trouble focusing on mine.

  “Private investigations.” Her voice quavered ever so lightly. “Does that mean you’re a detective, Mr. Pine ?”

  “Just the private kind,” I said. “I couldn’t arrest anybody, if that’s what you mean.”

  Her blue-veined hand jerked a little on the counter and very quickly she dropped it to her side. “I certainly didn’t mean any such thing! Why should you think that?”

  I gave her a hearty smile. “I hardly know myself. It just seemed something to say.”

  It failed to reassure her. She brought her hand back up and fidgeted it along the railing, looked past me at the row of chairs, then back to me again. The impersonal smile was completely gone now, possibly forever, leaving a pinched look to her mouth and worry in her eyes.

  She began to speak very quickly, the words telescoping. “I’ve worked for him for twenty-two years this coming August, Mr. Pine, and I feel I have the right ” She brought up her hand suddenly and pressed hard against the flesh under the right side of her chin. “I—I’m not making much sense, am I, Mr. Pine?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You’ll have to say a little more, one way or the other, before I can tell.”

  She looked quickly around the room again. Nobody there. There hadn’t been before and there wasn’t now. Just she and I, cozily together. My soothing smile was becoming forced.

  “He’s been acing so strangely, Mr. Pine. Ever since he came back from New York. Three days ago. Something is worrying him. Terribly. He seems older and thinner and there are new lines in his face. He won’t see anyone, Mr. Pine, or hardly even talk to them on the telephone. Just sits up there in his office and worries. He canceled all his appointments and is completely neglecting his Church duties.

  The day he came back he called up and told Father Kelly, his secretary, to take his vacation immediately. He’s terribly worried, Mr. Pine. And now he’s sent for a detective!”

  This could go on for hours. I said, “Maybe you’d better let the Bishop know I’m here. It sounds like every minute counts.”

  The words went over her head and shattered soundlessly against the wall. She went right on, looking at me without seeing me, getting it all out before it choked her. “It’s none of my business, of course, Mr. Pine. But I’ve been in this office more than twenty years and I can’t bear to see him so worried. If only he would … What did you wish to see him about, Mr. Pine?”

  I said gently, “It’s the other way around. He wants to see me. I have an appointment.” I put the ball of my thumb on the card and pushed it half an inch toward her. “Remember?”

  She looked vaguely at the thumb, a little surprised at seeing it there. “Certainly I remember. I’m afraid I’m just a meddlesome old woman who talks too much.” She blinked at me wanly and worked up a smile that was bankrupt before it was born. “I’ve certainly run on, haven’t I? I do hope you won’t say anything to him about … He’s such a good man, really, and I hate to see …”

  “Not a word,” I said.

  “You’re very understanding, Mr. Pine.”

  “It’s the least I can do.”

  She snuffled once and beamed damply at me. “Thank you. If you’ll be seated for a moment. His wire is busy.”

  She turned and went back to the switchboard while I was drifting over to the nearest chair.

  Time passed, dragging as it does when you’re waiting. I sat there in the center of a square of strained sunHght slanting in through a stained-glass window behind me and dangled my foot over the other knee. I divided my time between counting squares in a design of the heavy linoleum and analyzing the features of a red-hatted cardinal staring sternly at me out of black eyes in a life-size oil painting on the opposite wall.

  The PBX buzzed a time or two, but not for me. I dozed lightly in the sun’s pleasant warmth, thinking of a cigarette but reminding myself that only an unwashed infidel would smoke in church.

  The buzzer sounded again and I got the beckoning finger. The woman was back to being businesslike; she directed me through a closed door at the far end of the room. “Room 203, Mr. Pine. The stairs are down the corridor, to your left.”

  Up there the halls were carpeted with some short-piled tough material the color of an old bloodstain, and the doors were veneered in polished walnut, with cream-colored numerals and pearl buttons to push. I found 203 without making a job of it and laid my thumb against the buzzer.

  A voice, resonant and deep, the way I imagined a bishop’s voice would sound, told me to come in. I pushed open the door and entered with my hat in my hand.

  It was a room fitted out as an
office by somebody who didn’t know how to pinch pennies and who wasn’t expected to know how. It was large and square and the ceiling was away up above me. There was soft-piled rose broadloom to the baseboards, white metal Venetian blinds and gold damask draperies at the windows and redwood paneling on the only wall that wasn’t lined with shelves of books in rich bindings behind glass. A circular redwood stand in one corner supported

  a huge globe, and a console radio in the same wood stood across from that. The only visible object to prove this wasn’t the office of an oil baron was a large crucifix in the center of that open stretch of wall.

  Between the two windows was an oversize redwood desk supporting a lamp in dull bronze, a brown desk blotter trimmed in tan leather and gold, a white-marble pen set and a bronze ashtray big enough to bathe a camel in.

  There was a man in the tan leather swivel chair behind the desk. He leaned back and watched me blaze a trail through the carpeting; then he gave me a grave smile and said, “Good morning, Mr. Pine. I’m Bishop McManus. I appreciate your coming. Please sit down.”

  It appeared he wasn’t the type to shake hands with the hired help. I took the redwood and tan leather chair across the desk from him, placed my hat on a corner of the desk and, taking my cue from the ashtray, got out my cigarettes.

  The Bishop sat there and watched me get one burning, his strong square hands locked loosely across his slight paunch. When he saw that I was comfortable and waiting he unclasped his fingers and bent forward to push aside the lamp and get a better view of me.

  He said crisply, “Calling you yesterday afternoon, Mr. Pine, was something of an impulse on my part. By that I don’t mean I’ve begun to regret doing so; but I would like to know something about you before I go further into my … problem.”

  I blew smoke through my nose and got down to being cooperative. “I’m thirty-two, reasonably strong and, considering the life I lead, unreasonably healthy. I vote the Democratic ticket—when I vote at all. I was an investigator for the State’s Attorney here in Chicago for a couple of years. For the past two years I’ve been in business for myself in a small way as a private investigator. I can give you as references the names of some people you probably know.”

  I got another of his grave smiles. “It takes time to check references, Mr. Pine. Somehow or other I had the opinion we’d met before, but you corrected me on that during our telephone conversation yesterday. In my work, however, I’ve learned to evaluate people quickly and with reasonable accuracy. Instead of checking references I’m going to rely on that, since time is so important in this matter.”

  He stopped there and rubbed a palm over the hairy back of his other hand, his mild blue eyes fixed on the crucifix behind me. “What I would like you to do for me is undoubtedly simple for someone in your line. I want a man located. But the reason I want him located is completely incredible.”

  He closed his eyes briefly and gave a short rapid shake to his head as though faintly surprised to find himself discussing the matter at all. I knocked cigarette ash into the bronze tray and crossed my legs the other way. At the rate he was getting his story out, that tray wasn’t going to be too big after all.

  Even without the reversed collar and black dickey he would have looked the part of a clergyman. He was of medium height, with a build that had started out to be fat and ended up as heavy-set, the kind of build you find so often in men around his age. His bushy black hair was going to be entirely gray before his bald spot caught up with it, and he wore it combed straight back, although from the way it separated along one side I judged he had parted it at that point until recently. It seemed even bishops were sensitive about losing their hair.

  His face was round and inclined to puffiness about the eyes and under the chin. There were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and a few near his mouth. They didn’t seem to be new wrinkles either, no matter what the nice old woman downstairs had said. That got me to wondering how you would tell an old wrinkle from a new one.

  Bishop McManus put a hand against the desk edge and pushed himself deeper into his chair, sighing a little. “To be truthful, Mr. Pine, I’m not even sure he is missing. Your work may amount to nothing beyond delivering a message to this man at the address he gave me.”

  “Only,” I said, “you think maybe he isn’t there any more.”

  He nodded with slow emphasis. “Exactly. If he ever lived there at all.”

  “His name and the address he gave you will do to start with,” I said. “If he’s there I won’t have to know why you want him found. If you’d rather have it that way.”

  He considered it while doing a little finger tapping on the arm of his chair. “No, Mr. Pine. If I’m going to hire you, I’m going to trust you. I simply can’t send you into a situation like this half informed.” His eyes came up to my face and there was a glint in them that hadn’t been there before. “You see, I have every reason to believe there is an element of danger in the matter—a strong element of danger.”

  If I hadn’t appeared impressed it would have disappointed him. So I put a troubled line in my forehead and said, “I’ve worked on a job or two that turned out on the rocky side. It’s always nice to know in advance.”

  He blinked somberly at me. “It seemed only fair to warn you. If you feel you’d rather not get involved . . ,” He let it hang there, waiting to learn how much of the iron in me was rust.

  I gave him a big courageous smile to show that neither rain nor snow nor deep of night could keep Paul Pine from earning his living, such as it was. “Let me give it a whirl. Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think.”

  The Bishop sighed in his small way and made a tent of his forefingers and nudged his lower lip with it while making up his mind. Dust motes danced in the spring sunlight streaming in at the open windows and a soft breeze from the lake, five blocks to the east, stirred the ashes in the tray.

  “Ten days ago,” the Bishop said abruptly, “a man came here to see me. I was in New York at the time and the receptionist downstairs told him I would not be back for another week. He wanted to know the exact date I would be in my office, then left without giving his name.”

  He bogged down again and went back to prodding his lower lip, his eyes on the crucifix beyond my left shoulder.

  “That’s interesting,” I said, trying to get him started once more.

  Nothing got by him. He glanced sharply at me, the light shining along his blue eyes. “Not yet it isn’t, Mr. Pine. Please be kind enough to bear with me if I seem a little slow in telling this. I’m not altogether sure I should be telling it at all.”

  It was my first look behind the benign facade of Bishop McManus. I began to understand that there was a mind sharp enough to shave with behind those mild blue eyes, that his grave smile went no deeper than his teeth, that the only flabby thing about him was the wrapper he came in.

  I looked at the toe of my shoe and thought of my bank balance. It didn’t take much thought; it wasn’t much of a balance.

  Now that I had been put in my place, the Bishop was ready to go on with his story. “He was here, waiting downstairs, the day I returned. He insisted on talking with me in private. I brought him up here.

  “His name was Raymond Wirtz, although he Is using another name where he is staying. He sat there where you’re

  sitting now, Mr. Pine, and said he had something he wanted to sell me.”

  I said, “Let’s go back a little way if you don’t mind. Tell me what Wirtz looks like and your general impression of him.”

  “About your own height, Mr. Pine, but rather on the frail side. My first impression that he was a professional man of some kind was borne out by what he told me during our conversation. In his late forties, I think, although the state of mind he was in made him appear older. Thin in the face, brown hair, thinning a little at the temples. A fairly handsome man under normal circumstances, I would say.”

  “That’s twice,” I said, “you’ve commented on something other than his physical appearance.
Go into that a little deeper, if you will.”

  He put one hand over the back of the other and squeezed the knuckles while fixing his eyes on the line of smoke from my cigarette. When he spoke, his voice seemed curiously deeper.

  “The man was frightened half out of his wits, Mr. Pine. He was nervous, jumpy, constantly on edge all the time he was here.”

  “All right,” I said. “Tell me the rest of it in your own way. I won’t interrupt again.”

  Bishop McManus turned in the swivel chair to stare out the window at nothing at all. “When he told me he had something to sell, Pm afraid I got a bit blunt with him. He cut off my protests sharply by saying, as nearly as I can recall his exact words, ‘Pm not selling prayer books or rosaries, Your Grace. This is a single item and the only one of its kind. And the price is such that I would go directly to the Vatican if it were at all possible.’ “

  “With a build-up like that,” I said, “any amount under a million is going to sound mighty puny.”

  He turned his head to learn the effect his next words would have on me. “Precisely. But a million dollars was not the price, Mr. Pine.” He moved one hand in a slow graceful motion. “The amount he asks is twenty-five million dollars!”

  If he was trying to stun me he succeeded. I got my lower jaw up off my necktie and said weakly, “That should kick quite a hole in the petty cash.”

  It earned me another of his grave smiles. “The amount is preposterous, of course. When he mentioned such a figure I knew I was dealing with a madman or a crank. My only thought was to get rid of him as quickly and with as little fuss as possible. Humoring him seemed to be the best way. So I asked him what he had that could possibly be worth such a fantastic price. And he told me.”

  I was going to get stunned again. I could feel it coming. I waited seven seconds to help build up suspense before I said, “What was he selling?”

  “A manuscript, Mr. Pine. Written by Our Lord, Jesus Christ.”

  It might have been the honest awe in his voice, or maybe I’d been sitting too long in one place= But right then there was a prickly feeling along my spine and a lifting sensation to the hair on the back of my neck.