Bishop as Pawn Page 0,36
having a physical affair with some good-looking Spanish broad.”
“You know this for sure?” Tully asked. “That staying out of the sack was his idea?”
Shell extended his arms, palms up, as if to say, what other explanation makes sense. “Fits his profile.”
“So,” Tully concluded, “the simple answer to my question is no.”
“Not exactly.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t a physical affair. I’m convinced they never had intercourse … not even close. But they had—a what?—a spiritual affair.”
“Huh?”
Shell unwrapped a second candy bar and bit into it. “I can’t explain it. I’ve never seen anything like it. The guy could have had her, easy. She was bananas for him. He could have, but he didn’t.
“The way I see it, he just wouldn’t compromise his future. Must have taken a lot not to accept what he was freely offered. I’ll give the bastard that. But then, see, she changed. It was something like that character in Man of La Mancha—you know, Dulcinea. She’s a scullery maid and a whore. But the crazy Don Quixote keeps calling her ‘My Lady’ until she changes completely and starts acting like a highborn lady.
“Not that Maria was a whore, you know. But what I mean, she changed. Oh, she was willing to throw herself at him. But he’s Don Quixote. He’s going to teach her how to love ‘pure and chaste from afar.’ Okay, so she becomes Dulcinea … and I lost my Maria.”
“You mean—”
“I told you our relationship was on thin ice. Sex for me was like making love to a board. Well, Maria took the board away and left me nothing. Nothing”
No one spoke.
“As far as I know,” Shell said finally, “I’m the only guy in history to have been cuckolded by a couple of practicing virgins.”
Mangiapane barely suppressed a burst of laughter. Tully, with some effort, kept a straight face.
Shell, who was quite serious, continued. “Now, what the hell could I do about it? How could I say Diego was guilty of alienation of affection? He didn’t do anything except mesmerize her. She didn’t do anything but fall under his spell. The upshot of the whole thing was I lost my wife. I lost her to a goddam bishop. And there wasn’t a goddam thing I could do about it.
“It was awful. We’d be together, say at dinner, and she wouldn’t say anything—nothin’—just answer questions. With one word—the fewest possible syllables. She began sleeping in the guest room.
“I was going nuts.
“What happened next reminds me of a story.…” Shell smiled briefly. “Seems this doctor—a surgeon—was on trial for using abusive and obscene language. Trying to explain his side of it, he says to the Judge, ‘You see, Your Honor, on the day in question, I woke up about eight o’clock. The alarm didn’t go off. I was scheduled for extremely delicate surgery at 9:00. So I tried to hurry. Naturally, I cut myself shaving. I started breakfast before I took my shower. There wasn’t any hot water. After the cold shower, I found I’d set the microwave for too long and burned everything. In my haste to get dressed, I ripped the trousers of my suit. The car wouldn’t start. I lost two taxi rides when people pushed me aside so they could take the cabs. I was nearly an hour late by the time I got to the hospital. The elevator that took me to the OR stopped just a few inches short of the floor. I tripped on my way out. I fell flat on my face and broke the glasses I needed to perform the operation.
“‘At that point, a nurse came up to me and said, “Doctor, we just received a shipment of a thousand rectal thermometers. What do you want me to do with them?”’”
The two detectives couldn’t help but laugh.
“Funny,” Tully said after a minute, “but what’s that got to do with you?”
“Just remember,” Shell said, “how completely frustrated I was. For all practical purposes, I had lost my wife. It was like being with the living dead. And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. And I owed it all to this son-of-a-bitch bishop.
“That’s exactly the state of mind I was in when I walked into Carson’s house and saw the bastard standing there in the middle of a bunch of fawning sycophants. There he stood like Cock Robin in his black and red robes. I never even met him before. Just saw his picture in the papers, caught him a few times on TV. This was the first goddam