Smaller and Smaller Circles (30 page)

53

The blinds, he's
learned, make a characteristic sound when they're being drawn open or closed. He opens his eyes and sees the director by the windows. It's daytime.

“Good morning, Father.”

“Morning,” he croaks.

“You came to see me when I was confined. Thought I would return the favor.”

Saenz smiles weakly. “Not very good company.”

“You? Or me?” The director chuckles. “How are you feeling?”

“Been better.”

“Have the doctors told you what happened to you?”

“More or less.” His tongue feels thick, his mind thicker. He holds up both hands, heavily bandaged, in front of his face and stares at them. “Deep cuts. No major arteries or organs hit.”

Lastimosa pats Saenz's hand. “It's something of a miracle that you're still with us.”

“Fairly certain other people would use a different word.”
Must have a word with the doctors about reducing the drugs
,
Saenz tells himself.
Can't go on like this, without full control of my faculties, my speech.

“Well. Their opinion doesn't matter to me. Neither should it matter to you.” The director peers down at him. “You found him for us.”

“But gone. Finished.” Saenz is shaking his head. “Shot.”

“Yes.” The director's face is tight with repressed anger. “I've ordered an investigation. From what we can tell initially, it was some rookie from the police backup unit who panicked and fired the first shot. We'll get to the bottom of it; you have my word. But we also have to consider that your life was in grave danger.”

Saenz nods, but the expression on his face makes it plain to the director that he's unconvinced. “But lost opportunity.”

“I understand.”

A deep breath, then Saenz sinks back onto the pillows, so very tired.

“But I may have something to soften your discontent, Father.” The director settles himself into a chair by the windows, folding his thin arms close to his body. “When I first met you, you had just lost a battle with your Monsignor Ramirez.”

Saenz's eyes open wide, fix their gaze on the director.

“Don't
. . .
understand.”

“All these years you have been after him, Father Saenz. What has been your real goal? To defrock him? To expel him from the Church?”

“Charity,” Saenz bites out. “Remove him
. . .
from charity. No more access to children. No more hiding or being protected.”

“As I thought,” Director Lastimosa nods. “Well. I will come back in a few days, Father Saenz. And if you are better, I will have a story to tell you. I think you will find it very interesting.”

“Story?”

The door opens a crack and Jerome peeps in. Seeing the director, he begins to excuse himself, but the director calls out to him as he rises from the chair.

“Father Lucero. I was just leaving. Please, come in.”

Saenz puts out a hand to grasp the director's cuff. “What story?”

He smiles down at Saenz. “Give it a few days, Father Saenz. I assure you, it will be worth the wait.”

Little by little,
Saenz's wounds heal, and his strength returns. Most of the wounds—gashes in his chest, stomach, neck and arms, a
cut on his jawline and another just below his left eye—are deep. He will bear their scars for the rest of his
life, but he will have a life, and it will be more or less normal. Or at least, the sort of “normal” that is normal for him.

The doctors begin to reduce the dosage of painkillers so that he doesn't feel as though he's wrapped in cotton wool from head to toe all the time. He is able to handle visitors, although he asks to limit these to just a handful—Jerome, Susan, Tato, members of his own family. He is able, first to sit up, then to stand, to shuffle to the bathroom and back, and later, to walk to and from the hospital garden, albeit slowly.

It is on one of these trips to the garden, as he's sitting on a bench in the shade of a big
narra
tree, that the director comes to see him. He walks slowly up the path in his customary
barong Tagalog
, a thick manila envelope tucked under his arm.

“Good morning, Father.”

“Good morning.”

He points to the bench with a bony finger. “May I sit?”

Saenz slides over to one side. “Please do.”

Director Lastimosa sinks down on the bench with a slight groan, then smiles ruefully at Saenz. “You young people don't know how lucky you are.”

Saenz smiles back just as ruefully. “I'm not so young anymore, sir.”

They sit and contemplate the garden for a while in companionable silence. Then Saenz begins: “I seem to recall you had a story to tell me.”

“And I do.”

Saenz laces his bandaged fingers together and waits.

“What do you know about Eliot Ness and Al Capone, Father?”

Saenz turns and stares at him. “Eliot N—I'm not sure I
. . .
”

Director Lastimosa smiles. “The history books tell us that the US treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, told Ness to gather proof Capone was violating Prohibition laws. But nobody was sure if he could be successfully prosecuted. He was a slimy one.”

“So
. . .
the Treasury and the Justice Department took a parallel path.”

“Correct. They wrangled some help from Chicago's business elite and managed to convict him of income tax evasion.” The director looks as satisfied as he might have if he'd secured that conviction himself. “Eleven years in prison.”

Saenz leans back on the bench. “And this has something to do with Father Ramirez—how, exactly?”

“When we spoke in your hospital room last week, I asked you: what has been your real goal in chasing after Ramirez? And you said—”

“Remove him from the charity he heads. Cut off his access to minors. Remove the veil of protection that has kept him in a position of trust all these years.”

“And you have already presented to your superiors the voices of some of his victims. But they chose not to listen.”

“They listened, but they did not do what was most important: to turn him over to the law and to cut off his access. So the victims withdrew, recanted.”

“Then, Father, may I suggest that you, too, take a parallel path?”

“I don't understand.”

Director Lastimosa takes the envelope from under his arm and slides it across the bench toward Saenz. “Are you familiar with Monsignor Ramirez's lifestyle, Father Saenz? His real lifestyle, I mean—not the one that he chooses to let the rest of the world see. If you aren't, I think you should be. He lives in a manner that is—well, let's just say he's not only turned his back on his vow of chastity but also of poverty.”

Saenz opens the envelope and begins to pore over the contents: deeds to property, receipts, photographs—of expensive cars, of the facades of two homes in two separate gated communities, of a high-rise condominium in the heart of the Makati financial district. He turns to the director.

“Are you telling me Father Ramirez owns all these? How do you know? How can we prove it?”

“Let us say the monsignor is smart enough to divert money from his charity but not quite smart enough to fully conceal where it has gone.”

Saenz studies the photographs again. “Money from the charity. Of course.”

“Keep going,” the director says, tilting his head toward the contents of the envelope.

Saenz leafs through the remaining photographs. They show four very young men and women—possibly in their late teens, at most—going about their daily business to and from the homes.

“House help?” Saenz asks.

“Hmmm. Of a sort. They were former beneficiaries of
Kanlungan
.”

Saenz winces as if in pain. “So they're not really house help.” He's appalled, but not surprised, that Ramirez would have the audacity to bring wards or former wards of the charity to live with him—very likely to continue harming and exploiting them.

“Sadly, no.” The director stands. “You can keep those—my people have the originals. And if I may make a suggestion, you might want to pay a visit to Mrs. Veronica Urrutia when you have recovered fully. I think she and her friends on
Kanlungan
's board of directors will be very interested to learn how the good monsignor has been spending their contributions.”

Saenz is astonished.
A parallel path, indeed.
Still, after years of defeat and disappointment, he knows better than to allow himself anything more than the slightest glimmer of hope. “But this—all this has to be proven in court first.”

“Oh, yes, of course. And it will be an uphill battle, I don't need to tell you. But if I know anything about human nature, Father Saenz, you may just get what you want even before any case goes to trial.”

The priest rises unsteadily to his feet, his hands overflowing with the papers and photographs. “How?”

The smile on the man's face is wry but sad at the same time. “You tell a few rich people that a priest is abusing children? They may care, but they're unlikely to do anything about it. But you tell them that same priest is stealing their money? Sit back and watch how fast they move.” He shrugs. “Just the way of the world, Father Saenz.”

Saenz clutches the papers to his chest. “I can't—I mean
. . .
Thank you.”

The director begins to walk away, but then he stops, as though he's remembered something. “You know something, Father? I'm a Catholic. A good Catholic, I think. Mass every Sunday, confession and Communion whenever I can. But all these years, I've been worried.
About where the Church is going. About whether it still has the needs of the flock at the center of its mission. About whether it is operating within the framework of the law.”

Saenz considers these concerns, so similar to those that have troubling him in recent years.

“The Church in this great Catholic country of ours is the last great, unexamined mystery. And I think you know what happens when you don't let the sunlight into dark places, Father.” Lastimosa holds Saenz's gaze for a moment, then looks up at the sky. “It's going to rain soon. Better be safe inside when it comes down.”

54

He had second
thoughts about it, but Jerome has brought flowers anyway.

The marble headstone is small and simple, nothing but a name, a date of birth and a date of death. He stands in front of it for a few minutes, and then remembers the baby chrysanthemums and statis he's clutching behind him.

He bends and lays the flowers on the stone, beaded with raindrops from the morning's drizzle.

What a waste
, he thinks to himself.
What an awful waste.

He hears footsteps behind him, padding softly in the wet grass.

“You'll catch your death of pneumonia.”

“Hey,” he says, surprised at the sight of Saenz waving a black umbrella this way and that. “You're not supposed to be out yet.”

Saenz smiles mischievously. “I bribed a nurse.” His left hand is swathed in sterile gauze, one of many places on his body where Alex Carlos will be remembered.

“Don't tell me. Saenz money. Useful in a pinch.” They both chuckle, and then he turns back to look at the headstone in silence as Saenz stands beside him. “How did you know I'd be here?”

“Just a guess. I knew the funeral was this morning.” It has been several weeks since the night Alex Carlos was shot and killed, but his body was held for examination. “Thought you might not have wanted his parents to see you.”

Jerome nods.

“What are you thinking?”

“I don't know.” The younger priest is frowning now. “He smiled, Gus. Smiled before he died. Of course, you didn't see it; you were very close to dying yourself. Clear eyes looking past us to heaven and a smile like it was quiet in there at last.”

Saenz pats him on the shoulder. This is what allows Jerome to do his work so well, and this is also what causes him such suffering. He has compassion enough for a murderer like Alex: a child so badly harmed that he grew up broken and haunted, driven to harm others in turn.

“Not everyone can be saved.”

“No. Not everyone.” Jerome straightens up, running his fingers through his rain-wet hair. “How did you get here?”

“Took a cab,” Saenz says.

“I'll wait for you in the car, then.” He turns and walks toward the curb where his car is parked.

Saenz turns back to the white headstone.

A smile like it was quiet in there at last
, Jerome had said. But oh, what a long and terrible path to that quiet, and what a high price to pay for it.

I didn't like it. I didn't want any of it. I. Didn't. Want. It.

How important it was to him to have said this, the one thing he could not say all those terrible, silent years. To have said it so clearly and unequivocally, with the last breath and strength of his life.

All over his body, on his face, his chest, his arms and hands, Saenz can still feel Alex Carlos's last words.

After a minute or so, he opens his eyes and makes the sign of the cross over the grave. Then he folds up his umbrella, glad of the rain on his face as he walks over to where the other priest stands, waiting.

On a wet
green hill some distance away, Joanna Bonifacio waits for the two priests to get into Jerome's car and watches as they drive off.

Then she turns to Leo and thumps him squarely between his shoulder blades.

“Hey, Leo. That shot had better be in focus.”

“Come on, Boss. When have I ever let you down?” he says, grinning as he begins disassembling the camera and tripod.

She waits for him to finish, then slides into the driver's seat, switches on the ignition, then backs expertly out of her space and forward onto the road. And the whole time, one thought is repeating itself in her sharp, predatory brain.

The ratings will shoot through the roof.