McNiff couldn’t help himself; he whistled, softly, but enough to turn several heads at nearby tables. “Where would we ever get that kind of money!”
“Not from the archdiocese of Detroit!” Koesler said without fear of correction.
“No,” Mulroney agreed, “not from the archdiocese. Not in a million years. But-and I’m not sure whether to be surprised or not-but it is coming in. Some in dribs and drabs-nickels and dimes from the ‘gentlemen of the road.’ And some thousands of dollars from the better-heeled downtown executives and firms-the very people Clem used to hit up for the cash that flowed from them through Clem to the poor.
“No, money, oddly enough, may not be as big a problem as we might think. If you recall, money was never a significant problem for Clem: He never had any. But it never was a problem. Example: One day a woman came to him with a seven-hundred-dollar gas bill that she couldn’t pay. Clem didn’t have a penny. But he told her to go home and he would take care of it. A little later that same day, some people from Grosse Pointe gave him a check for $750. And that’s the way it went for him. He was indifferent about money personally. But he always got it and he always gave it away.”
“Just a second …” McNiff was gesticulating with his fork. Happily there was no food on it. “Has it dawned on any of you that Mo has one hell of a lot of familiarity with the process of canonization and Clem Kern’s chance for it?”
“Yeah,” Marvin agreed. “We know you come up with an awful lot of arcane information, but this is out of the ordinary even for you. I mean, knowing how many saints have been canonized in the past thousand years, the A.D. 1234 date when Popes took over, how many saints were named by the present Pope in a given year, and-save the mark-how much it cost to make Drexel and Seton saints … did you bone up on this just for tonight’s conversation? And how in hell could you know we were going to get going on Clem and sainthood?”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Koesler interjected. “It was Mulroney who got us started talking about Clem. We were discussing the play we saw tonight and Mo shifted the conversation.” Koesler beamed as if he had won a contest.
Marvin shook his head in disbelief. “Even then …”
Mulroney smiled. “Both charges are true. I did steer the conversation and I did hit the books, but not just for tonight’s get-together.”
“So what’s up?” McNiff wanted to know.
Mulroney couldn’t help showing pride. “I’m part of the process. I was named about six months ago but it wasn’t to be announced until now-or, rather, next week. But I wanted to tell you guys before it hit the news. Just keep it to yourselves until the beginning of next week when the announcement’s made.”
“No kidding! No kidding!” McNiff seemed unable to get over the news. “I can’t believe it. I never thought I’d know somebody who worked on a canonization. What happens next-you go to Rome? Are you the devil’s advocate?”
Mulroney laughed. “No, I don’t go to Rome. And I’m not
“The collaborator’s usually from the same diocese as the candidate and is supposed to be trained in the historical-critical method and also in updated theology. And …” Mulroney paused. “… the collaborator in the case of Monsignor Clement Kern is Father James Mulroney.” He finished with a vocal flourish.
“No kidding!” McNiff was very impressed. “You’re a … a …”
“Collaborator,” Mulroney supplied.
“Sounds like a role out of World War II,” Koesler said. “Are you going to be involved in some sort of war crimes trial after the canonization?”
Mulroney chuckled. “Only if Clem doesn’t make it.”
McNiff was so impressed he seemed to have forgotten all about his dinner, which was only half-eaten. “You’ve been a collaborator for months? What have you been doing? Do you get to talk to the Pope?”
Mulroney kept smiling. He’d anticipated that McNiff would be most bedazzled by the news. “No, I don’t get to talk to the Pope. Maybe someday but not yet. And what have I been doing? Just going about my job very, very quietly. We’ve got to gather everything we can find that Clem wrote. That’s important to the process. We’ve got to put together anecdotes, like the ones you guys were telling tonight. Thank you very much.”
“Don’t you have to find some miracles that you can attribute to Clem?” McNiff asked.
“Getting all that money donated might be one of them,” Marvin said. The others found this humorous.
“I don’t care what you guys think,” McNiff said. “This is exciting. Imagine: Having a priest we all knew so well become a saint!
“But Mo, how come you’re going to be public with your job now? What’s the occasion?”
“Actually, we have no choice. We’ve got to make what we’re doing public. It’s the next step in the process. We have no alternative. It’s at this stage that we are bound by the rules to make certain of his identity. We’ve got to make certain that, when we get done with this business, we’ve got the right person.”
“You mean …”
“That’s right,” Mulroney completed Marvin’s thought, “we’re going to exhume the body.”
“Bob! Bob! Are you all right?” McNiff began once again pounding Koesler’s back.
Once again a liquid had gone down the wrong way and Koesler had begun to choke. In a few moments his struggle for air seemed successful; his wheezing subsided.
“Be careful, Bob,” Marvin admonished, “your food is not supposed to kill you. At least not that suddenly.”
“Anyway,” Mulroney continued, “the bottom line is that I’m going to be able to invite just a few people to witness the exhumation and the ritual surrounding it. It may very probably be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So how about it? You guys game?”
Marvin and McNiff accepted enthusiastically. Koesler, tears streaming down his cheeks from the choking fit, was able only to nod.
15
This was where it had all started. The cataclysm known as the Detroit Riot of 1967 began in a building just a few doors north of St. Agnes Catholic Church.
At that time, Zoo Tully had lived in this neighborhood. He recalled the event very clearly. He remembered how the police had reacted to the rioting. Some were able to relate and more were incapable of relating to the black community that inhabited the fringes of the New Center area, which encompassed the golden-domed Fisher Building and General Motors headquarters, as well as bordering on Harper Hospital and the Cultural Center. That experience had cemented his resolve to join the police force and make a difference.
Now Zoo Tully and Phil Mangiapane were standing on the sidewalk outside St. Agnes Church on Twelfth Street, now better known as Rosa Parks Boulevard.
The street was all but deserted. But Tully could well imagine what it had been like when, a little more than a week ago, a riotous situation had occurred right here. Though much less far-reaching than the, ’67 conflagration, still it had been a riotous scene nonetheless.
“This is where the guy was standing, Zoo … right here.” Mangiapane indicated the spot. He had done yeoman’s work in catching up with the department’s investigation to date. And coming off the time spent looking for Father Keating, there was a lot of catching up to be done.
“The church was packed,” Mangiapane continued. “Of course there isn’t a hell of a lot of room in there. So the crowd spilled out down the steps and onto the sidewalk here. It was sort of a semicircle with the biggest part of the crowd right here-right in front of the center doors. They had a loudspeaker rigged so the crowd could hear what was going on inside. It was in the middle of all this that Salden bought it.”
