The Only Good Priest (11 page)

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Authors: Mark Richard Zubro

BOOK: The Only Good Priest
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“You could have organized it,” Scott said.
“With an alibi I couldn't use except to people like you?” he said. “That makes no sense.”
“Somebody did it, and you had the best reason,” I said. “We want to know whom you were talking to the other day after Mass and what was said. If you don't tell us, we blow the whistle on your sex life. A little nooky is one thing. A full-blown marriage, and a kid is another.”
He got up and paced the room, touching the fixtures, adjusting his Roman collar. He wound up at the sliding doors, tapping his knuckles against the pane.
“I thought I could stop by becoming a priest.” He turned to us. “Girls have thrown themselves at me since before puberty. I learned about sex fast, but I knew it was wrong.” He held out his hands to us, pleading. “I honestly believed as a kid that when I had intercourse outside of marriage, it was a mortal sin. It got so I'd have sex with a girl, then run to confession. I couldn't stop either habit. I liked being popular, and the girls turned me on. I never told them about my horrible guilt feelings, but I couldn't stop myself.”
He returned to the couch, sat back, and closed his eyes.
“You're the first ones I've told this to outside of confession.” He sighed deeply, reopened his eyes, and resumed his story. “At each confession I'd tell only the individual sin. I'd switch from priest to priest at different parishes. Even with the seal of confession I was petrified. I was afraid the priests would recognize my voice. I think one guy did.” He winced. “I prayed and repented, but the next week I'd do it again. I thought as a
priest it'd get easier. In the seminary they kept us away from most outside influence, so I didn't have much of a problem. I didn't have any trouble fending off the fags.”
“Gay people,” Scott reminded him.
“Oh, yeah, right,” Clarence said. “Anyway, being away from women helped. I've never been into jacking off. I'd always had an outlet. I might have beat off five times in my life.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I got out of the seminary, and it started all over. My first day of office hours in my first rectory, I met my future wife.”
He gave us chapter and verse of his fairly ordinary double standard. He even told us about cheating on his girlfriend with a number of flings each place he'd been stationed.
Once she got pregnant, he agreed to marry her. They moved down to the Manhattan area after he got assigned to St. Joseph's.
He talked for nearly fifteen minutes, maybe glad for a chance to finally tell somebody a little ordinary truth. I held myself in check while he unburdened himself. Oddly enough, while I thought he was a sexual idiot, I felt a little sorry for him, torn as he was between pleasure and punishment.
“Tell us about the fight with Sebastian,” I said.
“Who told you about that?” he asked.
I glared. “We ask the questions. You give the answers.”
His right fist clenched a moment, and he threw a string of unpriestly epithets at us, but he didn't get up to leave or try to throw us out.
After he ran down, I said, “I want your entire relationship with Sebastian, honestly detailed.”
After a few more spurts of wounded pride, he told us. He and the old priest had existed in tenuous truce. For two years, they had agreed not to tell the chancery about each other. Sebastian had questioned Clarence the morning after he stayed out all night from the rectory for the first time. Clarence knew he needed a cover, so instead of denying his sexual activity, he suggested a deal.
Sebastian's continued involvement in Faith, after being specifically ordered not to, could have caused him some major problems. Clarence agreed not to report him and to cover for him if necessary. In return Sebastian would maintain silence about Clarence's married life.
Clarence explained about wanting to stay a priest, emphasizing the good he could do for people. He wanted both worlds and would fight to keep them.
“Sebastian didn't raise much objection. Maybe he really was the saint everybody says he was. I think he felt sorry for me. I'm probably the first actively heterosexual priest he ever met. How could he talk? If I had told on him, he'd be in just as deep shit as me.”
“What about what Jerry overheard?” I said.
This was a pure accident according to Clarence. He'd never have threatened Jerry if he hadn't been so startled.
It seems an official high in the diocesan hierarchy had come to give him a friendly warning. Word in the chancery was that they had to cover up the real cause of Sebastian's death, but that an internal investigation of the priests in the parish, already secretly under way for some months, would be expanded. Rumors of sexual irregularities in, at, or connected with St. Joseph's rectory had reached too far up in the hierarchy to be ignored. Clarence didn't know why there needed to be a cover-up of the cause of death. He hadn't been terribly interested because of the threat the sexual investigation posed to his own safety.
On that day Clarence had panicked at the news. He told the official everything he knew about Sebastian's gay life and then confessed to sexual indiscretion. The chancery official was an old friend of Sebastian's and someone Clarence trusted from his seminary days. The friend promised to delay any investigation as much as possible, giving Clarence time to decide if he wanted to stay a priest, get a divorce, or find some unknown third solution. The friend had left. Clarence, relieved but still badly shaken, heard the noise and stumbled on Jerry. Fury at
another part of his life out of his control caused him to lose his temper at the boy.
I asked for the name of the chancery official; we'd have to talk to him. Reluctantly, under pressure, he told us it was Auxiliary Bishop John Smith. We also got access to Father Sebastian's room.
As we began our search Clarence said, “I don't think it'll do you any good. A couple of old guys, priests from the diocese, came by the day after the funeral and took out maybe a suitcase full of stuff.” Clarence didn't know of any family Sebastian might have. He thought he spent most holidays with an old friend or two from his seminary days. “I got the impression,” Clarence said, “that the ones who cleaned the room were old friends of his. They took only the immediately personal stuff.” He only knew that the priests came from the chancery and that it was a normal occurrence when a priest died with no family for someone from the central office to take care of things.
I told him I wanted him to call ahead to his buddy in the chancery to set up a meeting and to smooth our way. With some reluctance, he did so as we listened. Then we searched Sebastian's room and found absolutely nothing at all connected with murder. The combination of chancery office and the probable cleaning by the Weber sisters had made it totally antiseptic.
As we prepared to go I asked if he knew of any possible love interest in Sebastian's life.
He shook his head. “The guy believed in his chastity vow. He refused to judge others, but held himself to a rigid moral code. I can see him becoming very close to somebody but not consummating the union, if that's what gays call it.”
“Some of us call it that,” Scott said. We left him standing in the middle of the room. A quick stop at Glen's found the parents sitting worriedly on the couch without a lead to pursue. I explained how the disappearance might have been connected to Sebastian's death. They seemed to prefer that explanation to assuming some child molester had got hold of him. Glen had no
problem with my keeping Jerry's secret. He said, “What would we have done differently if we knew? The kid's been making his way home for years by himself.” We promised to do whatever we could to help find him.
In the city at Scott's penthouse we found a message on his machine from his parents. His relationship with them is tricky. His status as the winningest pitcher in baseball for the past ten years and the highest paid player in the game is a source of intense pride for them. As he won more games, their standing in Waskalosa, Alabama, soared from that of backwoods dirt-poor farmers to a reflected national celebrity. Plus Scott gave them a new home and enough money to enjoy a comfortable retirement. After he came out to them, their back-country born-again Baptist roots kept them from seeing or talking to him for months. The rest of his family, especially Scott's favorite sister, had worked on them to change. Despite their initial rejection and hurt, he'd continued to send them a monthly check, and they'd continued to cash it. Starting the Paris negotiations to end the Vietnam War was easy compared to what he went through before their visit. They insisted on staying in a hotel. Scott's got enough room at his place to house the entire population of Waskalosa.
I'd told him if my being out of the way would help, I would understand. That got me an icy no. He's never mentioned it, but I think the positive reception we get from my parents, brothers, sister, nephews, and nieces adds to his sense of frustration when dealing with his parents.
His parents' message said that because of all the recent airline accidents, perhaps they should wait a few weeks, then take the train. Scott called them immediately. How he can remain so calm while talking to them is beyond me. His deep voice rumbled assurances to Waskalosa for several minutes before he hung up.
He came and sat next to me on the couch overlooking the view of the Loop.
“We could go to Alabama,” I suggested.
“Nope. Here,” he said. “My territory. My lover. They've had time to get used to the idea of us. I'd also like them to meet your family.”
“If you can get yours to agree, I'm sure my mom and dad would cooperate.” He nodded thoughtfully. We changed and went down to his second-floor gym. We used the machines and weights for an hour.
At four we hurried to meet Monica Verlaine and Neil at the
Gay Tribune
office. Neil appeared in a well-tailored navy blue business suit. Monica wore a rust-colored velvet pant suit with a wide back belt and a scarf that draped from shoulder to waist, wide at the top, narrow at the bottom, colored a red, orange, yellow, and rust paisley.
I brought them up to date about Jerry, Clarence, and the chancery. I mentioned the possibility of the Lesbians for Freedom and Dignity kidnapping Jerry.
“Priscilla was her usual self today at work,” Monica said. “She fought with two advertisers, screamed at a receptionist, and balanced the books.” She gave a grim smile. “I don't know enough about that group to know if they'd do kidnapping or not, or in this case why. I can't see a benefit for them.”
Neil said, “They don't work by reason. Who knows why? I think the real obstacle is their inability to make decisions and act on them. Priscilla can organize books, figures, an office, but she can't organize people. A lot of people resent her. It was a mistake to elect her head of Faith. Her group is too bumbling to get to the suburbs, take the kid, and hide him successfully.”
Scott said, “According to what you and the cop said, they have done some successful violence.”
“Mickey Mouse shit,” Neil said, dismissing their past activities.
I said, “They could have hurt Jerry.”
“Not deliberately,” Monica said.
“Accidentally or any other way, they better not,” Scott said.
We left the newspaper and drove to the cathedral rectory, where we had our appointment with Clarence's mystery man
from Sunday. Many of the priests who worked in the chancery lived at the cathedral rectory only a few blocks away. We parked on State Street and walked up the wide stone steps to the front door.
A young priest opened the door and ushered us into a first-floor hall that had a black-and-white checkered tile floor, down the center of which ran a mahogany-colored rug. We went up a formal staircase to the second floor, where the decor changed. This was all quiet elegance in a gay Gothic sort of way. Fifties religious articles filled small tables at regular intervals down the hall. We stepped on plush deep-blue carpeting. Various cardinals, bishops, and archbishops from Chicago's past peered across at one another from portraits along the length of the hall that the young man led us down. We passed a room painted outrageously green.
The priest walked with his hands concealed in the long sleeves of his cassock. He had a fresh round face, all glowing red cheeks and frowning decorum. He led us to the office of the Rev. John Smith, one of Chicago's numerous low-level auxiliary bishops. Just outside the door, our guide's frozen look broke long enough for him to request an autograph from Scott, who signed the back of a holy card the priest produced from the depths of his cassock. “Thank you,” he whispered gratefully, then leaned closer. “I'm a big fan of yours, Mr. Carpenter.” He melted away down the hall.
I gave a knock. A soft murmur bade us enter.
We walked onto a blue carpet thicker and even deeper in color than in the corridor. White oak paneling covered three of the walls. The room might have been a sitting or drawing room in a nineteenth-century mansion. A set of hard-cushioned chairs and a settee were placed around a window whose heavy three-quarters-closed navy blue drapes shut out the blur of the cathedral next door. Paintings of religious shrines, properly lighted and hanging at regular distances from one another, adorned the walls. I recognized Fatima and Lourdes. One or two other chairs, best described as indoor graveyard furniture,
were scattered about the room. Brass lamps on delicate side tables provided light from either side of the settee. A man in an impeccably tailored black suit and Roman collar rose to greet us from the seat at the window.

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