Saint Mayonnaise

By Edan Waugh

John Sullivan is a man at the end of his rope. A dozen years ago with his wife, he abandoned his gaudy legal practice and, names changed, relocated to Dennis MA, to spend their final years with her Parkinson’s Disease out of public view. John has two nonprofits dedicated to refugee relief funded with questionable monies. He has brought the nonprofits and the monies to Dennis and has renewed with his wife their commitment to die together at a time of their own choosing.

John writes a weekly column for a local newspaper on the confusion of contemporary morality and struggles with the memory of a former partner convicted of murder. Can my hands destroy what I love? The day of action is at hand and with his wife they resolve to proceed only to stumble on a pittance.

Pope Francis is seen to appear to the gardener and his family of Honduran refugees. Their travel from Honduras is retold in graphic detail. The town of Dennis goes wild as cures tumble on miracles on a nightly basis and plans for a basilica unfold. Helicopters buzz the Sullivan enclave as a tourist attraction. Man is the measure of all things for John Sullivan and family. It is all a ruse.

A parade of rich characters unfolds. Their daughter’s plans for pregnancy are frustrated. An ambulance comes repeatedly. A trust beneficiary arrives announcing her leukemia has returned for the third time. The publisher wants to sensationalize the miracles and engages another reporter to make sure it happens. An aging pop star arrives to die in privacy announcing it is the last service an attorney can provide. A rough hand appears to claim his monies.

Can the fraud of an apparition be exposed? Will that be the end of it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Aug 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665727792

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 Edan Waugh.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by

any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system

without the written permission of the author except in the case

of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or

links contained in this book may have changed since publication and

may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those

of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher,

and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-2778-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-2779-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022914087

Archway Publishing rev. date:  08/03/2022

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Part One

Chapter 1   John

Chapter 2   The Last Supper

Chapter 3   Papa Francisco

Chapter 4   Mora

Chapter 5   Susan

Chapter 6   Luke and Mora

Chapter 7   Sophie

Chapter 8   Manny and Paco

Chapter 9   Horace

Chapter 10   Carlos

Chapter 11   Dorothy Sayer

Chapter 12   Confession

Chapter 13   First Apparition

Chapter 14   Eye in the Sky

Chapter 15   Reefer Keeper

Chapter 16   James

Chapter 17   The Bishop

Part Three

Chapter 18   Alatar

Chapter 19   Rest in Peace

Chapter 20   The Message

Chapter 21   Satch

Chapter 22   Requiem

Epilogue

Dedicated to the

Michael J Fox Foundation

For Parkinson’s Disease Research

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to people living or dead is purely accidental except for people who have cut their way through the ordinary pages of life into the annals of criminal history. The author wishes to thank those friends who have read and encouraged these pages and especially to Edith Raymond Steele whose courage inspires this work.

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

JOHN

I describe myself as a man on the edge of destruction, a man at the end of his rope buried deep in the scrub oaks of Dennis, Massachusetts. We have lived here for a dozen years under new names solely for the sake of privacy. Surrounded as I am by the folks of this community who are absolutely certain about absolutely everything, I keep myself to myself with the exception of my weekly column in the local rag and the protection of people I love. Thankfully Cape Tales has limited circulation but it reveals the newly named me to be a man admitting the confusion of contemporary morality. Besides, it gives me something else to do as I keep measure of the violence in this world and watch a cherished life ebb away.

The pills necessary to do the job have been carefully counted and liquid morphine securely hidden. On reflection, I am not sure when I finally resolved to act. There was that day when I told myself she could endure no more, that I could endure no more, and that all this must end and end now. There is no point in pain. The wife of many years and mounting maladies sadly no longer recalls much of anything. I have been able to handle that for some years as the condition progressed but time has run out.

Who can be sure what strange thing set this man to act, a tone, a touch, a taste, an old wish, a new dream? It was July 1, the first day of the long holiday weekend hiding here in the backwater of Olde Cape Cod.

The day of our planned finality was set in stone, but there had been other such days, other days set in stone that became sand that became water, that all washed away. Not so today. On this day of planned finality the sun was high and hot. I had not yet cleared the luncheon table, a fallen spoon went unnoticed; the gardener came to the door.

Is it a weakness in the species that leaves us ready and willing to scent the supernatural? All play a part in daily life and so I have been left to manage, caught somewhere between cynic and seeker. I am not a halfway person; I want to believe but reality challenges.

The details of any moral failure are never lost to me which is the bread and butter of my weekly column but when their litany is so long that all joy has vanished, well then the wise man tells himself, as I did this day, it is time to do act upon our long held resolve to end all this. We do not believe in eternity, no, we definitely do not. Never. We have discussed this so many times for so many years but absolute certainty is dissolving. What is happening to me?

I am a practical man and have been successful in life depending on your definition. I currently manage two nonprofit corporations from this refuge in the woods and never take a salary. If life is a board game where one needs to run about and touch most everything, well I have been there and done that from the White House to Beijing; I have tasted prestige and power. I have been entertained in the capitals of Europe and Asia, bought and sold whatever I wanted and travelled and partied long and hard wherever one must; indeed I have lived large and now I think too long. Do not think harshly of me; I have worked in this life from the drudge of law to the harsh reality of refugee relief, the last being my true commitment outside the home in recent years but it is time to let others pick up the burden as I must leave. Some might say depression has the last word.

There were those Pennsylvania days which I consciously try to forget. Enough years ago, you might think they would fade but back they come unbidden in the quiet hours of any day or night. There is nothing to be gained by looking back but monkey thoughts jump unwelcome from the past.

The recurring nightmare. Shake the hand that shook the hand of Tom Capano. So a friend had played me with a laugh, repeating the words with a certain martial cadence as we sat around the table after a dinner party in 1997 or 98. Anne Marie Fahey was the appointment secretary for the Governor of the State of Delaware. She was last seen on June 27, 1996 after a dinner date with Capano. I imagine the food left something to be desired so he chopped her into pieces and fed her to the fish off the coast of New Jersey. Not really; he stuffed her in an ice chest which refused to sink so he blasted away with a shotgun until it sank, well most of it anyway. His death sentence became life in prison. He is graciously dead now. It was a notorious story for the press with daily dialogue followed by books and a made-for-TV movie but they never told me whether he used his right hand, the hand I shook, to cut the flesh and pull the limbs apart, to stuff them in that ice chest and head out to sea.

There was not much to her, anorexic at the time, some ninety pounds, but dead she was still longer than the 162 quart Marine Series Igloo with a 42 inch interior that Capano purchased. Did he use his hands to break bones, snap the ankles, crush the knees, maybe sever the neck and fold it forward? Did he arrange the body with respect, push the hair from her forehead one last time and cast a loving glance? I would. He must have used his right hand, the hand I shook. Did he leave a residue of evil on me with his touch? Was I infected long ago by some satanic bacteria that has slowly grown and at last has captured my brain? Can my hand destroy what I love?

Capano was my partner, technically speaking, for a nanosecond or so but enough to stain me. I went through the receiving line one Tuesday night and congratulated him after his election to the partnership. In fact my own clients had been shocked at the prospect of his election, sharing with me detail after detail of shame upon shame. Multiple allegations of family criminal activity but I said nothing and raised not a single objection.

The grand profession presents a young person with the opportunity to meet the most outstanding folks.

I am no longer a young man and my hands are stained.

And then there was the call from the party. Service in Harrisburg for the new administration. I said no. Cash began flowing unbidden from a classmate, himself in prison of course. Seed money if I needed it. A suitcase silently appeared stuffed with uncounted greenbacks, bundled hundreds and fifties on quick inspection; it sat in the corner of my office as I pondered. The result was a second call from the party. Would you consider running? Who would head the ticket? No, not him, no way. I stepped away. In the legal profession, there is gold to be found even when you run and lose. Get your name out there. Be someone. But I said no again and a second, third and fourth suitcase appeared shortly thereafter followed by another two for good luck. I never ran for office and wrote and told my benefactor I had no plans to ever run. Three letters from me and time passed without an answer until my classmate died in a prison riot. What to do with all that money?

Washing is a slow business. It has taken many years to cleanse the suitcases and I am still not done. I keep them in the workshed here in Dennis, all but one now emptied. Money has a way of growing and I have always been good at that. I became a charitable man and of course some nasty wags will say charity begins at home. There are people like that and who can blame them in a city where every other politician is a crook.

I would deceive myself in thinking I have shaken off this past, moved away from the small town practice of Philadelphia, eschewed the corruption of Pennsylvania politics and found the clean life hidden here in winter-lonely Cape Cod under my nom de plume, especially when I have asked my former partners for help. I have needed a team in place to protect my friends. I have primed them with plans and pumped them with monies to protect the ones who live with me and help me today, those who work hard and live among us, some with permanent resident status, and others undocumented, some would say illegals. I would throw out the felons in a heartbeat but when you have a man who has suffered great violence in the land of his birth, paid the price in pain, suffering and loss with a wretched journey here and then worked for years building a good family, well the softie in me thinks that is somehow different and worthy of protecting from summary ejection. Two hundred years ago we sailed here on a three masted retired man-of-war with our piano intact; not all Irish were bottom of the boat boys. Privileged beginnings create obligations, so my own father said and his father before that. And so in reaching back to my former partners for their help, in forming a team of legal beagles eager to make their own mark for a fee-paying nonprofit which I am twice over, I drag back unwanted thoughts from bygone days. The sorted past comes forward with everything else to haunt my dissolving life. So be it.

There were over three thousand men named John Sullivan in the Boston area and more on Cape Cod those many years ago when first we decided on that name and general locale. My former partners deal with me as always by email by the name they have known for years and they may guess the physical location. Unlike Carm, there was no need to change the first name. John is John, a vanilla name easy to get lost with, but Carmelita, herself the daughter of a dead senator, she attracts the grief of her inherited properties and frankly her personal privacy more than my own helped drive this silly plan.

I receive mail from my partners and others under my given name but only through the office of a former client now in Albany and some from another former client now in Wilmington, both having escaped lengthy prison terms and thereby feeling indebted to me. They have greatly aided in this disappearing act. Clearly this has not been perfect; we receive the occasional visitor here in Dennis who knows our names and lives of old but the name change has provided a good measure of protection from the unwanted. Nothing is perfect.

Actually the idea of a name change, a new name and a new location, first occurred during the Capano fiasco when I could not dodge press calls from friends of many years wanting the inside story. Say, John, tell us why you weren’t called as a character witness for your partner. Tell me, John, just between us girls, how is he taking to prison life? John, fella, how is the boy holding up against his death sentence? But all of this was really secondary to a fundamental desire to start a new life, a final chapter