But maybe, the Kraut thought suddenly, just maybe there was a way he could juggle it. He would clear Symington-he owed the guy that-but it didn't mean the gravy train had to come to a screaming halt. Confident again, he headed for dinner at the Dorian Gray, wondering what Vince would bring him tonight.
Robert Keisman and Jason thought Harold Gerber might be a whacko, but he was innocent of the murder of Dr. Simon Ellerbee. Gerber's confession was what Keisman called a 'blivet7- four pounds of shit in a two-pound bag.
The Vietnam vet just didn't know enough of the unpublished details to fake a convincing confession. But Delaney wanted the guy's innocence proved out one way or another, a Id that n s what the two cops set out to do.
The Catholic Bible was a flimsy lead. They had no gut reaction one way or the other. The only reason they worked at it was that they had nothing else. It was just something to do.
They started with the Manhattan Yellow Pages and found the section for Churches-Roman Catholic. There were 103 listings, some of them with odd names like Most Precious Blood Church and Our Lady of Perpetual Help. the thought of visiting 103 churches was daunting, but when they picked out the ones in the Greenwich Village area, the job didn't seem so enormous.
The Spoiler took the churches to the east of Sixth Avenue and Jason Two took those to the west. Carrying their photos of Harold Gerber, they set out to talk to priests, rectors, janitors, and anyone else who might have seen Gerber on the night Ellerbee was murdered.
It was the dullest of donkeywork: pounding the pavements, showing their ID, displaying Gerber's photograph, and asking the same questions over and over: 'Do you know this man?
Have you ever seen him? Has he been in your church? Does the name Harold Gerber mean anything to you?'
Sometimes the church would be locked, no one around, and Keisman and Jason would have to go back two or three times before they could find someone to question. They worked eight-hour days and met after five o'clock to have a couple of beers with Harold Gerber. They never told him what they were doing, and he always asked complainingly, 'When are you guys going to arrest me?'
'Soon, Harold,' they'd tell him.
'Soon.'
They kept at it for four days, and were beginning to think they were drilling a dry hole. But then the Spoiler got a break.
He was talking to a man who worked in an elegant little church on 11th Street off Fifth Avenue. The old man seemed to be a kind of handyman who polished pews and made sure the electric candles were working-jobs like that.
He examined Keisman's ID, then stared at the photo of Harold Gerber.
'What's he wanted for?' he asked in a creaky voice.
'He's not wanted for anything,' the Spoiler lied smoothly.
'We're just trying to find him. He's in the Missing Persons file. His parents are anxious. You can understand that, can't you?'
'Oh, sure,' the gaffer said, still staring at Gerber's photo.
'I've got a son of my own; I know how they'd feel. What does this kid do?'
'Do?'
'His job. What does he work at?'
'I don't think he works at anything. He's on disability. A Vietnam vet.
A little mixed up in the head.'
'That I can understand. A Vietnam veteran you say?'
'Uh-huh.'
'And he's a Catlick?'
'That's right.'
'Well,' the handyman said, sighing.
'I'll tell you. There's a priest-well, he's not really a priest. I don't mean he's unfrocked or anything like that. But he's kind of wild, and he's got no parish of his own. They more or less let him do his thing, if you catch my drift.'
Keisman nodded, waiting patiently.
'Well, this priest,' the janitor went on, enjoying his long story more than the Spoiler was, 'Father Gautier, or Grollier, some name like that-he opened a home for Vietnam vets.
Gives them a sandwich, a place to flop, or just come in out of the cold.
I'm not knocking him, y'understand; he's doing good. But he's running a kind of scruffy joint. It's not a regular church.'
'Where does he get the money?' the detective asked.
'For the sandwiches, the beds, or whatever? The Church finance him?'
'You kidding? He does it all on his own. He gets donations from here, there, everywhere. Somehow he keeps going.'
'That's interesting,' Keisman said.
'Where's his place located?'
'I don't know,' the old guy said.
'Somewhere south of Houston Street, I think. But I don't know the address.'
'Thank you very much,' the Spoiler said.
He told Jason about the priest, and they agreed it was the best lead-the only lead-they had uncovered so far. So they started making phone calls.
They phoned the Archdiocese of New York, the Catholic Press Association, Catholic Charities, the American Ugion, asking if anyone knew the address of a Catholic priest who was running a shelter for Vietnam vets somewhere around Houston Street in Manhattan. No one could help them.
Then they called the Catholic War Veterans and got it: Father Frank Gautier, in a storefront church on Mott Street, a block south of Houston.
'Little Italy,' Jason said.
'I used to pound a beat down there.'
'Wherever,' Keisman said.
'Let's go.'
They found the place after asking four residents of the neighborhood. It looked like a Mafia social club, the plateglass window painted an opaque green, and no name or signs showing. The door was unlocked and they pushed in. There was a big front room that looked like it might have been a butcher shop at one time: tiled walls, a stained plank floor, tin ceiling.
But it was warm enough. Almost too warm. There were about a dozen guys, maybe half of them blacks, sitting around on rickety chairs, reading paperbacks, playing cards, dozing, or just counting the walls. They all looked like derelicts, with unlaced boots, worn jeans, ragged jackets.
One was in drag, with a blond wig and a feathered boa.
No one looked up when the two officers came in. Keisman stood close to a man holding a month-old copy of The Wall Street Journal.
'Father Gautier around?' he asked pleasantly.
The man looked up, slowly examined both of them, then turned to a back room.
'Hey, pop!' he roared.
'Two new fish for you!'
The man who came waddling out of the back room was shaped like a ripe pear.
He was wearing a long-sleeved black blouse with a white, somewhat soiled clerical collar. His blue Levi's were cinched with a cowboy belt and ornate silver buckle. He was bearded and had a thick mop of pepper and salt hair.
'Father Gautier?' Jason asked.
'Guilty,' the priest said in a hoarse voice.
'A%o you?'
