“I . . . I think I saw him interviewed on that same newscast . . . the day of the funeral. What was his name?”
“Uh . . . Tuller. No. Tully. Yes, Tully. Lieutenant Tully.”
“Tully.” Kramer seemed to be memorizing the name.
“Then there was that second prostitute. Killed the same way, the same horrible way, the papers said.”
“Yeah . . .” Kramer seemed abstracted.
“I wonder if it will happen again,” Koesler said.
“What?”
“I said, I wonder if it’ll happen again. The papers described them as serial murders. The reporter said the police said it could happen again. I wonder if it will. What do you think?”
“How should I know?” Kramer said, a whit testily.
Koesler sensed that he might be overstaying his welcome. After all, when one was as nearly a hermit as Kramer, visits should be kept to a minimum in time and frequency until the recluse feels comfortable with company.
“Hey, Dick,” Koesler said, “I’ve taken up enough of your time.”
He paused to allow Kramer to express the usual disclaimer of polite society. Something like, “Oh, do you have to leave already?” When it was clear that no such empty reassurance would be uttered, Koesler continued. “But it was good seeing you. We’ll have to do this again. Hey, you know where St. Anselm’s is; why don’t you stop by sometime? Bring Therese if you want. We can sit around for a couple of hours and solve most of the Church’s problems . . . what do you say?”
“Sure, sometime.”
With that, Koesler left, concentrating carefully on how he was going to escape from these ancient catacomblike buildings. He had to remember which doors had been locked and which left unbolted. His sense of direction was, for once, remarkably unerring.
As he drove away from Mother of Sorrows, Koesler rehashed his conversation with Kramer. All in all, it had not gone badly. A bit awkward at the beginning and end, but Koesler attributed that to Kramer’s workaholism. The poor guy relaxed so seldom it was only natural that he would be ill at ease at the outset and, in the end, tire of the conversation.
Koesler resolved to keep this social contact with Dick Kramer open and also, at his next visit with Monsignor Meehan, to report that all seemed reasonably well with Father Kramer.
Koesler was grateful that Meehan had suggested this renewal of an old friendship. He felt that he had accomplished something this day.
18
Arnold Bush never went on dates. Or, in the words of Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, hardly ever.
For one, he didn’t know what to do about women. His upbringing had been so grossly muddled, he felt at best ambivalent about females. The time spent living in a house of ill repute—as a bygone era described it—had convinced him that women were manipulative, shallow, insincere frauds.
The archconservative Catholic school he had attended taught him that women were to be reverenced, respected, left untouched before—and pretty much after—marriage. At one extreme of his imagination stood the seductive whore; at the other the Blessed Virgin Mary. As a result, he never quite achieved any sort of realistic blending of these attitudes.
While he harbored violent tendencies toward women, he scarcely ever got close to a woman, let alone violated her. While he went well beyond Church doctrine in adoration of the Blessed Virgin and kept pictures and statues of her, these objects shared space with soft- and hard-core pornography on the walls of his apartment.
He was filled with so many varying positive and negative vectors that he hardly ever moved off square one when it came to initiating any sort of social contact with a woman, much less asked one for a date.
Enter Agnes Blondell, an attendant in the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Department. She had been increasingly attracted to Arnold over the brief time they had worked together. She couldn’t put her finger on any one incident that caught her attention. It was the whole thing.
For starters, he did not come on to her the way almost every other man did. He had kept his distance. Very suave, almost continental, she thought.
Agnes was endowed with, as one of her many boyfriends had put it, a figure that would not quit. By actual measurement—and she had actually measured—38-28-40.
Her final reservation concerning Bush disintegrated when she saw a manifestation of his strength. The way he had manhandled a few of the other attendants at the morgue! The respect, if not downright fear, in which he was subsequently held! Yet he did not go out of his way to pick a fight. No; he just stood up for what he wanted. He was the strong, silent type who did not appear to be your run-of-the-mill octopus when it came to women. He certainly seemed to be Agnes Blondell’s kind of guy.
So it was, late Thursday afternoon, that Agnes took the initiative. “Doin’ anything tomorrow night after work, Arnie?”
He had not anticipated any such overture. Indeed, hardly anyone ever familiarized his name. He was either “Bush” or “Arnold.” Thus he was uncharacteristically flustered. “After work? Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, Friday, tomorrow, after work ... got any plans?”
If he did, he certainly could not recall any of them at this moment. “I don’t know. I guess not. No, I can’t think of any.”
“So then, howdja like to go out somewhere? Maybe a movie or something?”
“Geez, I don’t know . . . uh . . .”
“Agnes. Don’t you know my name, Arnie?”
“Of course. Agnes Blondell.” Bush was very much aware of Agnes Blondell as was every other still living man at the morgue. But while the others fantasized about “Jugs” Blondell, Bush had no clue as to how to relate to her.
“Call me Aggie, Arnie. All my friends do.”
“But we’re not friends.”
“We could be. How about tomorrow night?”
“Well, sure.” Why not? “What did you have in mind?”
“I dunno. A show, maybe? A movie?”
“We could go where I always go to see movies.”
“Where’s that?”
“The Tel-Ex Cinema at Telegraph and Ten Mile.”
“Tel-Ex? I never heard of it . . . it ain’t one of those Triple-X porno houses, is it?”
“No, no; no way.” Not that Bush did not indulge in an occasional hard-core porno flick. But only occasionally: They were so expensive.
“This is a legit movie house. But the movies only cost one buck admission.”
“All times?”
“All times.”
Now, Agnes recalled seeing listings in the newspaper movie guide for the Tel-Ex. Four screens, as she recalled, with first-rate films. You just had to be patient until every other area theater had shown the movies to their satisfaction. Eventually, many of the better ones trickled down to the “Dollar Cinema.” It made sense to her: Why waste all that money on a show, when, if you waited long enough, you could see it for a buck. And if it turned out to be rotten, you hadn’t wasted four or five dollars. Another point in Arnie’s favor: sensibly abstemious.
“Done,” said Agnes. And they made their arrangements.
At 6:30 Friday evening, Arnold called for Agnes at her apartment. She appreciated promptness. She also liked the economy-consciousness of his simple black Ford Escort. Two more pluses for Arnold Bush.
They arrived comfortably early for the 7:15 screening. The movie was “Rambo VII.” Agnes found irresistible the similarity between Sly Stallone on the screen and Arnold Bush seated next to her. Stallone appeared to be
