Dead Wrong Read Online Free Page B

chapel and his own goddam priest! On top of all that crap, little Brenda works in the chancery for the archdiocese of Detroit.”
    Koesler had to admit privately that all Nash said was true: Ted had indeed made himself the most “official” Catholic layman in Michigan—perhaps in the country—maybe even the world.
    “The thing that’s gonna happen when Teddy’s affair becomes public …”—Koesler noted that Nash eschewed the conditional “if” for the more definite “when”—“the thing that’s gonna happen when Teddy’s affair becomes public,” Nash repeated, “is that this whole Catholic fable gets exposed and destroyed. And that means that Teddy’s whole world is gonna crumble and so is Teddy. If he can’t be Pope Teddy, he ain’t gonna be nobody. See?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “What you don’t see,” Nash continued as if Koesler had not spoken, “is that when this masquerade is over, Teddy is gonna be left impotent in every which way.
    “And then … and then …”—Nash seemed to be unwinding like a tired spring—”my whole empire, everything I worked for, everything I built, is gonna be nothin’. All my enemies, all my competitors that’ve been snapping at my heels all these years, they’re gonna be all over Nash Enterprises. And there ain’t gonna be anything left of it. It’ll be gone. Everything.”
    Koesler thought he saw a tear trickle from Nash’s eye. There was no way of being certain; if it was a tear, it vanished in one of the many wrinkles.
    Ah, so that was it! Koesler now thought he understood. This had absolutely nothing to do with religion, God, the sacraments—any sort of consolation or hope that Koesler could and was prepared to deliver. Nash couldn’t have cared less about the state of anybody’s soul: not his, not his son’s—certainly not about the soul of his son’s paramour. It was simply business as usual. Or, rather, keeping the business thriving as usual.
    Not for nothing had Ted Nash created this image of himself as super-Catholic. Apparently and against all odds he saw himself as God’s embodiment of the One True Church—although how he was able to accomplish this, given his private life, Koesler had great difficulty imagining.
    Charlie Nash could perceive, even predict, the outcome of this charade. Teddy would be unmasked—probably sooner rather than later. And when that happened, when his feet of clay were exposed, he would not have the bravura to tough it out, laugh it off.
    And with Teddy frozen and vulnerable, the vultures would gather and devour about the only thing Charlie Nash valued in this life or the next: Nash Enterprises, Inc. And the news media—the news media! What a field day they would enjoy lampooning this holier-than-thou fraud! Not only would he be stripped of his every Catholic costume, but his girl-on-the-side would be revealed as an employee of the Church.
    Among the avenues open to Charlie Nash to avert this catastrophe was the one he was now pursuing: Get to Father Koesler and convince him to in turn convince his cousin to break off her liaison with Ted.
    So far, it did not seem to Nash that he was accomplishing his mission.
    “Look …” If Nash had been a less formidable individual, one could almost have taken his tone as pleading. “It can’t be that hard. You can talk to your cousin—all right, your foster cousin. She got at least some Catholic school training; Maureen saw to that. She’s gotta know this is wrong. Besides, what kinda future is this for her? What’s she gonna get outta it? Teddy is not gonna leave Melissa and the kids. They’re his respectability. Brenda’s got hold of the short end of this stick and it isn’t gonna get any better. You’d be doing Brenda a favor—a very big favor.”
    “And if I do,” Koesler said, “and if Brenda denies that there’s anything going on between her and Ted …?”
    “But it’s true, dammit! It’s true!”
    “I’m not some sort of private investigator,