The Confession of Joe Cullen (10 page)

“Your friend doesn't like priests,” O'Healey said, putting out a hand to welcome Cullen.

“He's not much of a friend.”

“I'll be in San Francisco for at least, a few weeks. My mother's still alive, bless her soul, so I'll be with her — Mrs. William O'Healey. You'll find her in the telephone book if you ever get out there.”

“That's not impossible,” Cullen said. “This is my last trip down here, and then I'm through with those mother —— Forgive me — it's the language I speak in the places I go. God knows, they tried to make me literate, but I forget. An officer and a gentleman was not my style.”

“Perhaps it was. Are you going to throw up this job, Cullen?”

“Yes.”

“When did you decide that?”

“Last night, Padre. About four in the morning.”

“A good time for grave decisions. May I thank you, Joe Cullen?”

“For what?”

“For helping me.”

“If you want it that way. I can't keep asking you what you mean.” Standing with the priest in the shade of the shed's overhang, Cullen felt uneasy. He wanted to say something that he could not put into words, something of great importance. He tried to put the words together in his mind and failed, and as he stared dumbly at the priest, his eyes were wet.

The Honduran guard, indifferent to the conversation between two North Americans in a language he did not understand, now stiffened his stance and whispered, “
Señor, el capitan
.” Cullen turned and saw Sanchez approaching the shed. The captain was dressed in an impeccable, perfectly fitted olive-drab uniform, trousers that appeared to have been modeled after a New York motorcycle cop's whipcord pants, brown boots polished until they glittered, and a front-tilted visored cap, seemingly styled after the headgear worn by the Nazi general staff. There was no hint of moisture anywhere on the uniform. A Sam Browne belt completed the costume, along with the pistol that hung from it in a polished leather holster and a set of leg irons dangling from the captain's hand.

“The bastard doesn't even sweat,” Cullen whispered.

“Just watch him, Joe, and watch yourself. He's a snake.”

“Lieutenant Cullen,” the snake acknowledged as he joined them. “Father O'Healey.” His English was almost without an accent. “If you'll just snap on these leg irons, Father, we're ready to go.”

“What in hell does he need leg irons for?” Cullen demanded.

“We follow regulations,” Sanchez said.

“Where's he going? We're in a chopper.”

“Our regulations state,” Sanchez said, irritation beginning to show, “that when a prisoner is being moved from one location to another, he must wear leg irons. I will thank you not to interfere, Lieutenant.”

“Let it go,” Father O'Healey said. “I don't mind the irons, Joe.”

The guard helped O'Healey put on the irons, and as they started slowly toward where the helicopter was parked, the priest said, “And Eugene Aram walked between with gyves upon his wrist.”

“What?”

“I don't know. You came up with the word ‘gyves.' A line of poetry, and I can't even remember who wrote it. I love poetry, Joe, and my mind is a jumble of lines and quatrains and sonnets and couplets, all of it like clothes packed at random.”

“Where's your luggage?”

The priest broke into laughter and said, pointing to his sandals, “These and my robe and my beads are my wordly goods. I shaved with your razor day before yesterday, if you remember, and as for my toothbrush — gone when they took me. I'm not pretending toward Saint Francis; it simply happened that way.”

“I wouldn't buy it so easily,” Sanchez said. “He came here uninvited and joined the rebels, those murderous
Indios
of ours, and it's all very well for him to talk about poetry when the truth is that he supports godless Marxists and even takes up arms with them against us.”

“Not arms, sir,” the priest responded in Spanish. “Not arms. And the
campesinos
don't even know that Marx exists.”

Unruffled, Sanchez shrugged, and no one spoke until they were at the helicopter.

Then Cullen stiffened, held back, beads of sweat on his brow. Wrong, wrong; he remembered the feeling. “I want Kovach along. I want a navigator.”

“One hundred miles.” Sanchez shrugged.

“I'm a lousy navigator,” Cullen lied. “Kovach is good. I want him with us.”

“No need for a navigator.” Sanchez was smiling. “Only one hundred and eighty kilometers. I'll watch the ground.”

“Joe, let's get on with it,” Father O'Healey said. “Let's get out of here.”

The guard led the priest onto the helicopter. Sanchez followed. As Father O'Healey turned to glance at Cullen, the pilot made a circle of thumb and forefinger. Cullen strapped himself into the pilot's seat, told the others to buckle up, and then sat motionless for a minute or so, familiarizing himself with the controls. He loved the feel of a chopper; there was nothing in the world like it, nothing like the tip forward and then the soaring climb, as a bird climbs — so absolutely different from the roaring climb of a fixed-wing plane. He took off. Over the airstrip and away — and then he heard the sounds of movement behind him.

“Buckle up!” he shouted, and then swung around to see Father O'Healey struggling with Sanchez and the guard, Sanchez bursting into a stream of profanity. Then, very quickly, in no more than five or six seconds, the drama was over. Sanchez drew his pistol and fired. The shot was directed at O'Healey, who was struggling with the guard in the open doorway of the helicopter. Cullen tipped the chopper, and as Sanchez fired, the guard was between him and O'Healey. As the guard spun back from the shot, Sanchez kicked the priest. The guard fell headlong through the door, knocking the priest off balance, and another kick from Sanchez flung O'Healey out of the helicopter, the priest screaming in horror as he fell.

Cullen tore at his seat belt. Sanchez shouted at him, “Fly the plane, you bastard!”

The priest's scream faded, and Cullen, realizing that it was too late for him to be of any use to Father O'Healey, flew the plane instinctively while his mind raced like a stone rattled aimlessly in a tin can. A man he had come to love and cherish, the only man he had come to love and cherish in all of his adult life, had been murdered in front of his eyes, and he had not prevented it or done anything to prevent it — or could he have prevented it, the awful hell and horror of falling from a plane, a hell and horror that threaded the minds of all war pilots? As if he were drained of blood, the blood replaced with ice water, he felt his whole body go cold with horror at the thought of this cheerful, wise, pink-faced man falling eight hundred feet to the most horrible of deaths.

“Just stay in your seat and fly the plane,” Sanchez yelled, “or I'll put a bullet in your head.”

Time passed, seconds, minutes, and then Cullen turned around, a devilish grin replacing his lovely smile; and as he turned, he drew Kovach's revolver from his leg holster. Sanchez was standing by the open door, one hand clutching a rail, the other holding his made-in-the-U.S.A., army-issue, forty-five-caliber automatic pistol.

“And who will fly the plane then?” Cullen asked, his voice breaking as he spoke. Then he turned the helicopter abruptly, and as Sanchez fought for his footing, Cullen shot him, squeezing off shot after shot, as carefully as if he were on a shooting range, until the gun was empty. He swung the plane wildly, rocking it like a carnival fun ride, until Sanchez's body slid through the open door. Then, weeping, Cullen flew back to the base.

It was a strange land where the hot sun created a stillness, a slowing of action that made Cullen feel he was rushing through a turgid river of air where nothing but he was in motion. He found Kovach in his tent, sprawled on his cot and puffing happily on an exceedingly long Nicaraguan panatela.

“Hey, man,” Kovach said. “You just left.”

“Are we loaded?”

“What happened?”

“Sanchez killed O'Healey. Threw him out of the plane. Then I shot Sanchez and dumped him and brought the chopper back.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Maybe,” Cullen said, “but if we don't get into our plane and out of here before they discover that Sanchez didn't come back with me, we are finished. Cooked geese. Shit. So move your ass, buddy, or I take off without you.” And Cullen turned and started to walk toward the runway where the 727 was parked.

Kovach joined him. “We'll never get away with it. Never. You crazy bastard — why'd you have to shoot Sanchez?”

“You're walking too fast,” Cullen said. “Nobody walks fast at this time of day. They'll notice and start looking for Sanchez.”

“They're probably looking for him right now.” Kovach moaned.

“Who? He's the boss. He looks for people; they don't look for him. They try to avoid him. Slow —” Two guardsmen walked by, carrying a roll of bedding and netting. They grinned at the two Americans, and in Spanish, “Find a girl — we got the bed.”

In front of the plane, a guard was usually stationed, except that at this moment he was in the shade of a wing, talking to a pretty neighborhood girl. Cullen and Kovach climbed into the plane, and with the first roar of the motors, the guard and his girl tumbled out of the way. As the big plane rolled down the runway, Kovach asked Cullen, “What do we do when we get to Texas?”

Cullen didn't answer until they were airborne, and then he said, “Texas — fuck Texas!”

“What does that mean?”

“I'm through. When we land in Texas, I'm collecting my pay and then taking off, and I don't stop driving until I reach New York.”

“And where does that leave me?”

“You go your way — I go mine. Dump on me, Kovach. I did it. Tell them I moved you at the point of a gun.”

“What about the gun?”

Cullen handed it to him. “Throw it out.”

“Why?”

“Because that gun killed Sanchez. It's evidence.” They were gaining altitude now, and already Cullen could see the ocean in the distance. “Drop it in the water, and then we're out of it clean.”

“You got to be crazy. When they discover Sanchez missing, first thing will be to call Texas.”

“Look, Oscar,” Cullen said gently, “the only wheel in the place was Sanchez. The others went to Tegucigalpa. The chopper's back. Who's going to worry about Sanchez? The guards hate his guts and are scared shitless of him. So nobody's going to call Texas, even if they know how to get through to Texas, which I don't think they do. I think all the connections are made in Tegucigalpa, maybe in the embassy there for all I know. So just work easy.”

Cullen was correct in his predictions. Three and a half hours later, they touched down at Salsaville, and before dark, Cullen had collected his money and was in his car, bound for New York City. In the hours between Texas and New York, he tried to work out the question of his own responsibility in the death of Father O'Healey.

He came to the decision that he himself was responsible for Father O'Healey's death.

The District Attorney

B
EING INTERVIEWED ONCE,
and asked about things that annoyed him, Harold Timberman mentioned that under the pervasive influence of TV and films, millions of people believed that places like New York and Chicago were represented by a single person as district attorney. Timberman, district attorney for Manhattan, had a staff of over three hundred assistant district attorneys working under him. He felt that figure should be known so that the enormous reach of crime in the cities would not be glossed over.

Timberman took crime and punishment very seriously. He had the reputation of being incorruptible — some of it due to the fact that he came from an enormously wealthy family who for the past hundred and fifty years had dedicated themselves to public service. They were an old German-Jewish family who had changed their name from Timmerman to Timberman — for reasons lost to the present generation.

Timberman himself was slender, gray-haired, and most elegant in his attire. He had a long narrow head that was usually set erect and aware, a thoughtful face, and dark eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses. He was a serious man of small humor, who thought seriously, moved seriously, and considered matters seriously. He had an astonishing knowledge of the criminal justice system in New York, and he could recall that he had met Lieutenant Mel Freedman somewhere and that Freedman was head of detectives in a small and unimportant precinct on the Lower West Side. Thus, when a TV tape came to him by messenger marked
PERSONAL AND IMPORTANT,
with Freedman's name on it, he decided to honor the policeman's request and view it himself. He had no free time on the day he received the tape, and he took it home with him to view on his own VCR.

His wife, Sally, had planned a small dinner party, and Timberman convinced her that he could be excused by ten to look at the tape. “They're not late people,” he said to her.