In God's House (23 page)

Kate and I were on the patio. I knew she wanted to tell the children we were divorcing and she wanted to do it on Saturday. I didn’t want to talk to the children about this and I didn’t want to talk about talking to the children about this. Nothing but pleasantries had been exchanged between the two of us for two weeks. She had completed the arrangements that would have us living apart, decorating a townhouse in Thiberville for me to live in. In the old days, I would have started raising arguments against divorce, trying to convince her to change her mind. This time I knew she was right.

Mildred, our housekeeper, had set out a tray with coffee, juice and pastries she’d heated in a frying pan with butter. She brought a phone to the table. I took the call and Kate waved and walked toward the horses.

“Renon, this is Zeb. Did you see yourself on the national TV news programs last night?”

“Nope. Could you tell which one of us was the criminal?”

“With both of you in suits it wasn’t easy.”

“What you got?” I asked.

“I’m pushing up against a deadline. I have a deal with the weekly here in Thiberville,
The Courier
, and they have a strange print cycle. It hits the stands on Wednesday, but our stories have to be in by Friday, edited before Sunday night. Can I ask you some questions?”

“Shoot.”

“First, the subpoena list for the priests’ personnel records. The Chaisson subpoena. Can you tell me what you know about those priests?”

“Don’t know. I’ve only met a couple of them. Can’t help you.”

“Can you tell me what the bishop knew about complaints made against Father Dubois before he was sent to Our Lady of the Seas in Amalie? I don’t even live here and already I’m hearing rumors about Dubois in other church parishes. It’s secondary stuff. No one related to a victim is talking, but others are, and the talk is strong. But it’s just talk so far.”

I laughed. “Why don’t you ask the bishop, Zeb?”

“Right. Like he’s gonna be talking to me. By the way, the diocese has a congenital idiot as director of media relations, Lloyd Lecompte. I called him and he lectured me on my obligation as a Catholic not to bring scandal to the Church. How does he know I’m a Catholic anyway?”

“He just assumes it. Almost everyone here is. Lecompte may be an idiot, but he’s got control right now. He’s got the local TV stations and the daily,
The Thiberville Register
, under control. You might find you are the only person not playing by his rules.”

“What are you telling me, Renon? The rest of the media is fixed here? You saw the trucks and people at Chaisson’s law office yesterday.”

“Right. They were all there. And I bet Chaisson came out after we left and held court for whoever would listen.”

“Yeah, he was out there for half an hour. Afterwards, he talked to me inside for over an hour.”

“Zeb, I am willing to bet you that breakfast at Brennan’s that
The Thiberville Register
has next to nothing in this morning’s edition; nothing about the bishop, and nothing of Chaisson for sure. My wife, Kate, saw the Channel 2 news last night and said they had film of Dubois leaving the jail with deputies around him, and the two of us getting in the cop car to leave Chaisson’s office, and maybe a one-minute voice-over about the priest being deposed. They had no pictures of the bishop or monsignors at Chaisson’s
office. They had nothing of Chaisson’s press conference. This is Catholic country, the bishop’s king and everyone else is a pawn.”

Zeb rattled through a long list of questions. I couldn’t have helped him even if I’d wanted to. He seemed to know a lot more than I knew or he was close to knowing a lot more. After twenty minutes, I saw Joe Rossi’s car coming up the drive and rang off.

Mildred escorted Joe Rossi to the patio. Rossi hit his head on a low branch of the big cedar tree near the brick walk. He hit it hard enough to draw a bit of blood.

Plopping in a chair and grabbing a pastry from the tray, Rossi breathed deep and leaned toward me. “Jon Bendel told me about the dust-up yesterday at Chaisson’s office. I think you are going to get your ass fired off this case. Jon tells me the diocese’s corporate papers specify that although the bishop and the vicar general are authorized to enter into a contract calling for the payment of a sum in excess of ten thousand dollars, the contract only becomes binding after a majority vote from the lay diocesan financial advisory committee. Your agreement never went before the board. So, the contract with you is in violation of the diocesan rules. Jon can cancel it. They can fire you.”

“Wrong again, Joe. First, as I told you before, Dubois is my client and only Dubois can fire me. Now you say Bendel can cancel my contract where the diocese guarantees my fees and expenses. Wrong. I have not sent the diocese any invoice for professional services yet, so we don’t know if the contract with me is in excess of ten thousand dollars, do we? This is just Bendel’s bullshit and you don’t need to drive all the way out here to carry messages for him.”

“Renon, you know I like you. I always have. You’ve been like a son to me at times. But you’re crazy. You know that too, don’t you? I don’t know what you think you’re doing.”

“Listen to me a minute. By last night, Dubois had honored every outstanding subpoena. Ponce and Thomas passed on taking testimony from him. I have an agreement with the DA and Judge
Labat to have two deputies accompany Dubois back to the treatment center. It is in the interest of virtually everyone, especially the diocese, to get him out of here as soon as possible, as far away as possible. I know the bishop wants him out of sight, out of mind. You want him out of here, and Bendel, and—”

“Yeah, right, so let’s get him out of here. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is I need the diocese to front a half-
million-dollar
bond by tonight. That takes 10 per cent in cash, fifty grand. You’re tight with that thief that runs Best Bonds. Can you get him to put up a bond for that amount? He’s Catholic, right?”

“Gimme a phone.”

I gave him the phone and went in search of Kate. I didn’t find her.

When I got back to Joe Rossi, he was on his second pastry. With food in his mouth, Joe said, “Frank says it’s gonna take fifty thousand, but if it’s in cash it won’t hit the books. No record. No one in the media will know the diocese put up all that cash for Dubois’s bond.”

“Really? You and Jon Bendel gonna get the lay financial advisory board to sign off on this deal? A fifty-thousand-dollar cash, under-the-table payment into the pockets of a greaseball wanna-be Mafioso bondsman – on behalf of a priest charged with raping children? Will the lay advisory board sign off on that?”

“I’ll get the money from Jean-Paul Moroux and I’ll deliver the cash to Frank at Best Bonds. I’ll have the bond form at your office at three o’clock. But you gotta promise you’re gonna quit freelancing. We all have Dubois’s best interest in mind, but we have a greater obligation…”

“I know, Joe, I know. The common good.”

“You double-crossed some powerful people yesterday for that powerless prick Dubois. If you went on a search-and-destroy mission across this state, you could not find anyone as powerless as this prick Dubois or anyone as powerful as the people you’re fucking with. Shit, son, we can make a monkey governor – done that twice. It’s just plain stupid to fuck with us, Renon. And you’re not a stupid
guy. Maybe you’re playing way over your head, maybe we drafted you into a league you can’t play in. The stakes here are high.”

“I thought you said I was stupid awhile ago. Now you say I’m not stupid.”

“No. I never said you were stupid. Crazy. I said you were crazy.”

I went to Jacques’ Café for a follow-up with cop-turned-
private-investigator
Johnny Wilcox. Usually with Wilcox, I’d wait for him to finish a job and report to me. This time I called the interim meeting. I wanted a progress report.

Wilcox got right to it. “I hear from some old retired city cops that over twenty years ago the esteemed vicar general of the Thiberville diocese, Monsignor Jean-Paul Moroux, was picked up at the bus station here, in the men’s room. He offered five dollars to an undercover vice cop named Dauterive for a blow job. I don’t know if he wanted to blow the cop or wanted the cop to blow him.”

“Doesn’t sound like he’s in Dubois’s class. It’s not kids we’re talking about here. My first response is, bizarre as it sounds, who cares? But exactly how do you know this?”

“I know people. An ex-dispatcher here told me. Then I found Dauterive. Actually, this Dauterive guy is still sort of a cop. Now he’s with the sheriff’s department in Lake Charles, where he lives with his daughter and works part time as a courtroom bailiff. He barely remembers the incident. Can’t remember which way the good monsignor wanted the oral sex. There was no arrest, no report. He says he thinks the priest was pretty much dead drunk at the time and a police supervisor drove him home. I also have unconfirmed information that Moroux has been treated several times for alcoholism somewhere way out of state.”

“That’s interesting. You got anything else?”

“Not much, Renon. I told you it would be damned near impossible to get anything.”

Wilcox took the list out of the pocket of his windbreaker and handed it to me. “The guys I circled are just priests who were moved within two years of the time they were posted in a parish. I have a source in the diocese who tells me quick moves like these transfers can be suspicious, but it may mean nothing. The ones I marked with asterisks, and I think there are twelve or thirteen on this list, are well known to the police as homosexuals who frequent that bar, The Daisy Chain, down by the underpass. Two asterisks, like the ones next to Moroux’s name, indicate priests who have had encounters with police in bus stations, rest areas and the like, but no charges. Record wise, the whole list is clean. No criminal charges or civil suits against any of them.”

I counted the names circled and those with asterisks. The total was twenty-four. Twenty-four out of thirty-one. “That’s it, Johnny? All you got?”

“Pretty much. There is a name that is not on this list. I bumped into this information when I was poking at the woodpile. There is a Father O. D. Ellison. I’ve picked up information from two people, former cops, that this priest murdered two boys while he was assigned to a parish in Willow Springs. What they knew was sketchy, but both parties said they thought the priest killed two brothers. That church parish now belongs to the Diocese of Providence, but at the time it was part of the Thiberville diocese. I hear the priest is now in a monastery on the Kansas plains somewhere. Ellison was not on the list, so I did not pursue it. You want me to follow that trail?”

“Follow that trail to the end, Johnny.”

Zeb Jackson was waiting for me when I got to the office. We sat at the conference table and he had coffee. Zeb handed me the
typescript of the article he planned to submit to his editor, and asked what I thought. I read it quickly.

“Not much. I don’t think much of it. It’s not anything. What the hell is it supposed to accomplish?”

“I’m not going to lie to you. It’s cold out there. Everyone is talking but no one is talking for the record. People can only give me rumors and gossip.”

“So you have nothing.”

“Exactly. This cover piece is just top-water bait. Maybe it will bring some fish, some victims, to us and we’ll be able to develop stories. Maybe it will bring the big fish off the bottom, the diocese, to the surface, attacking us. If neither one of those things happens, I expect to be back in New Orleans soon, permanently. There’s a story here, but I am not sure anyone will ever get it. I’m trawling now, just skimming the surface, hoping something takes the bait. I know this weekly newspaper is not going to do any more unless there is some major movement in the next few days. I think the editor is a born-again charismatic Catholic, whatever that is.”

“Well, don’t worry about it. Even if you go back to New Orleans, I suspect you will be back. I think this story has a long way to go.”

Zeb had not been gone from my office ten minutes when Rossi burst in unannounced, sporting a Band-Aid on his forehead. He was sweating. Sweating and pacing. “I tried to tell you, Renon. I tried to talk reason.”

I was behind my desk. “Christ, Joe, don’t you have a life? You want to tell me why you’re here?”

“Tell you? Goddamn right, I’ll tell you. On the way from your house, when I am trying to get back to work, get back to my life, my car phone goes off. Damned thing sounds like a bomb when it rings. It’s Jon Bendel calling about that piece-of-shit weekly newspaper I wouldn’t wipe my dog’s ass with. This prick reporter called Jon’s office all day Wednesday and tried to button-hole him yesterday at Chaisson’s office. Bendel put a tail on him. And where the fuck did he go? He came here. That’s where.”

I smiled. “You have a car phone? And a dog?”

“Funny, huh? Everything’s a fucking joke to you. You have no idea. You have no idea how much trouble we have gone to, what we have done to keep the media away from this Dubois thing. Now we find you entertaining a reporter in your office. We can sure as hell fire you now. We got ya. Conflict of interest, call it what you want. You are working against the interest of the people who are paying you.”

“I’m lost, Joe. You got me doing what exactly? Having coffee with a man who has not published a word and is asking questions of everyone who is involved, including your buddy, Jon Bendel?”

“It’s the teaching of the Church to avoid scandal to the Church. It is the obligation of every Catholic. Nobody who is bringing scandal to the Church is going to be employed by the Church. Talking to a reporter about this shit is causing scandal to the Church.”

Rossi wheeled around, a maneuver that was not easy with his girth, and he almost fell over in the process. At the door, he paused, looked back at me and shook his head.