Now, from his seat in Boston, ghosts from his years as a monsignor in Baltimore and a bishop in Chicago were materializing into flesh-and-blood problems with legal representation. These sorts of accusations seemed always to erupt in waves, and usually came from men and women who had exhibited unstable conduct in their youth and were hardly faring much better in adulthood. It was difficult to determine which ones were telling the truth and which ones were just looking for a way to pay for whatever substance they were addicted to. At the time, Rome had supported his handling of the issues. He would quietly remove the cleric involved and let things smooth over.
But this time it was different. This time the victims were going to the press. And once the press started calling, the pressure to issue a formal apology, make monetary restitution, or even turn the accused over to civil authorities increased. Mulcahy had inherited his post in Boston only six years before, many years after most of the claimed incidents of abuse there had taken place. He didn’t think it was entirely coincidental that his predecessor entered early retirement shortly before various news outlets got ahold of the complaints—hundreds in the Boston archdiocese alone, and thousands nationwide, the highest number made public in the history of the American Church. At last count, an independent research report had identified more than four thousand priests accused in nearly eleven thousand incidents since the 1950s. Where they were getting this information from was a mystery to Mulcahy. Rising through the ranks in the Church, he learned that he and the others were expected to refer sexual-abuse cases to their superiors for handling rather than to the civil authorities. The suggested guidance on such cases was rooted in a Vatican decree called Crimen Sollicitationis, which addressed solicitation of sexual favors before, in, or after confession. According to the decree, all parties involved—including the victims—were expected (if not directly ordered) to maintain silence about such incidents and any associated investigations under threat of excommunication. In the absence of formal instructions on how to treat abuse that took place outside confession, Mulcahy’s superiors had tended to follow Crimen Sollicitationis. For his entire career, this guidance had been respected. But that had changed, and with it, Mulcahy noticed, so had other areas under the Church’s control.
When evidence of widespread abuse began to gather attention, for every outraged parishioner, there’d been one who remained true and committed to the Church. These supporters shared with church leaders the information about cases they came across in the police precinct, in the schools, and in attorney’s offices. (“Several accusers came in together,” one woman had recently told Mulcahy, speaking of a visit to one of Boston’s sharpest civil litigators, where she was a receptionist. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what they’re doing there.”) Tip-offs of this kind helped neutralize unwanted surprises that would knock any other leadership off-kilter. But now, Mulcahy had noticed a cooling of support. Attendance numbers for weekly Mass, including the one he presided over, were down. And more than a few telemarketers reaching out for the bishop’s annual appeal at Christmas had been given surly responses to requests for money. “So you can pay for the lawyers, you filthy bastards?” said one angry message left on the archdiocese’s general number, and the caller demanded to be taken off the call list. It was a request the telemarketers immediately obliged.
No, it was obvious to Mulcahy that the leaders in Boston and DC had known this might be coming when they approached him with news of his transfer to the Northeast, back to his hometown and memories of growing up in South Boston with his parents and their soft Galway accents. With his large belly, red cheeks, and twinkling blue eyes, Mulcahy was the perfect figure to assume leadership in a situation like this and quell the fears of their followers. Nothing about him spoke of sexuality at all—normal or depraved—and his record was stellar. In his many years serving believers in every corner of America, he hadn’t once been directly involved in an accusation from a parent or child. And the one and only time he encountered what might be a problematic priest, he took care of the situation.
Father Mike Pechowski was a dynamic teacher who connected with his middle school students, when Mulcahy met him in 1986. Mulcahy, a monsignor then, had thought this was admirable. He had grown up in a more stern tradition of Catholicism, one populated with perpetually enraged Irish and Polish nuns who taught you to fear Jesus more than revere him. Forgiveness wasn’t something to be sought as a means of growing closer to God. It was something to tearfully beg for, or risk facing the flames of hell, which the nuns described in excruciating detail.
He found Mike’s approach refreshing. He noticed the way Mike reached out to kids who came from broken homes, kids who needed the Church to help reinforce what was right and good. Mike was a devoted basketball coach, and Mulcahy thought his idea to take his students to the local Catholic high school games was a good one. They would look forward to ending their time at Saint Gabriel’s primary school and moving on to Sacred Heart High, where they could enjoy the more extensive extracurricular activities it offered as a larger and coeducational school. One evening after a game, Mulcahy went to dinner with Father Bill Schroeder, the principal at Sacred Heart, to talk about his top students and where they might be steered for a college education in line with Catholic teaching (“Keep them the hell away from Saint John’s,” Mulcahy told him. “That place is about as Catholic as the state of Israel.”). After dinner, Mulcahy realized he’d left his scarf in the gym. Schroeder offered to take him. He took Schroeder’s building keys and left him in the warm car while he jogged across the deserted parking lot and went in the side door of the gymnasium.
The scent of industrial cleaning solution mixed with ammonia hit him as he entered. A lightbulb dying in a wall lamp thrummed loudly and warped the ceiling’s reflection on the floor, so it appeared as though he were walking not on the hard, waxed squares of a hallway, but on a shallow, watery surface. A high-pitched wail broke the silence. It sounded a little like the whine of a steam pipe. But he turned the corner, away from the ceiling pipes, away from the lightbulb’s hum, and heard it again, echoing down the empty hallway where light spilled from the gym door.
In the narrowing hallway, his footsteps no longer echoed down the long corridor. He could now hear voices coming from the gym, ghostly whispering, clearing of the throat, and, interspersed throughout, what seemed to be laughter or crying. He reached the double doors of the gymnasium, finding the right one slightly ajar. Shadows of movement interrupted the ray of light, then they stopped. He pulled open the door slowly and peered in. The gymnasium appeared to be empty, but he knew he had heard and seen something.
“Hello?” he called. The words bounced from the glossy floor to the ceiling and back. “Hello?” he tried again, this time louder. He walked toward the bleachers where he’d been sitting and climbed the stairs. Down the long narrow length of the row he spotted his scarf.
He was wrapping it around his neck when he saw it—a swift movement through the slats of the bleachers beneath him, accompanied by a whimper. Someone or something was there. He dropped to his knees and peered into the dimly lit area below, and there it was—the knobby leg of a crying child.
“Come on out, now,” he said through the gap. “You know you’re not supposed to be here.”
The shallow sobbing stopped. “I said come out, son,” he repeated. “It’s all right. You just need to go home.”
He walked down the stairs and rounded the corner to the small space between the wall and the bleachers. By now the boy, who looked to be about eleven years old, was standing up and looking at him with fear, tears streaking his cheeks. His left hand was clenched around something while his right fingered the top of his pants, moving quickly to pinch the snap button closed. It happened so quickly, it barely registered in Mulcahy’s mind.
“Do you need a ride home?” He’d seen situations like this more often than he would have liked. Kids who ended up lingering at libraries, schools, even the rectory while they waited for paren
ts, babysitters, or aunts and uncles who couldn’t be bothered to come.
The boy looked nervously to his right. His gaze was fixed there. Mulcahy walked closer, but the boy broke into a run all the way down the bleachers to the other side. Mulcahy jogged after him, slowed by the need to dip and dodge beams that threatened his six-foot frame.
He caught up with the boy on the gym floor, grabbed him by the arm, and twisted him around. A half-eaten Snickers bar flew from the boy’s hand and skittered across the wooden floor, part of the wrapper still clutched in his hand. Suddenly, the boy vomited onto his shoes, the contents of his stomach looking like he’d raided a candy store. Mulcahy recoiled.
“I’m not going to hurt you—” Mulcahy looked around the room for a paper towel dispenser, anything to clean up the mess. “I just want to make sure you get home safely, all right? Father Schroeder is outside in a nice warm car, and we’ll have you home in no time.” The boy blanched.
“I’m—no, thanks. Please,” he whimpered. His protest was interrupted by the squeak of a door on its hinge. Mulcahy turned in time to see one of the doors swinging shut. He marched the boy over and pushed through the doors with more force than usual.
“Are you here with a friend? Huh? Planning a prank? Come on!” He shouted the words into the dim hall. “Come out now! It’s over! Time for you to go home!” He wasn’t accustomed to being disobeyed. When the second boy did not appear, irritation bubbled into his voice. “Get out here now!” he yelled.
Mike Pechowski rounded the corner at that moment, a sports bag slung over his shoulder and a basketball in hand. “Everything okay, Monsignor?” he said, but the words didn’t have their usual pep.
“I think so, Father. Just a couple of hooligans who need to get home. I forgot my scarf and happened upon them.” Mulcahy tried to walk the boy closer to Mike, but the boy dragged his feet, squirming and twisting. “Do you recognize this young man?”
Mike smiled broadly at the boy. “Of course I do.” The boy vehemently resisted Mulcahy now, wrenching himself this way and that to escape.
“He’s Tommy Gilroy,” Mike said. “And he’s usually not this much trouble, are you, Tommy?” He hunched down and looked at Tommy. “Stop causing problems. Come on, I’ll take you home.” He reached for Tommy’s arm, but the boy withdrew, turned his head sharply, and began retching again, fierce dry heaves that racked his small body and made him cough.
Mulcahy felt alarmed. Tommy Gilroy was ill, that much was clear, but when he reached out to feel the boy’s forehead, Tommy shrieked. “I think maybe it would be best if Bill and I, if we take him to the hosp—” He paused when he saw them through the mesh pocket on Mike’s bag: a handful of Snickers bars.
“What are you doing here?” Mulcahy asked slowly. Mike’s body jolted.
“Me?”
Mulcahy chose his words carefully. “I thought you left when we did.” He looked around the deserted hallway. “There’s no one here except—” He nodded at Tommy, who had stopped fighting and limply swayed in his grasp. His hand nervously played with the top snap of his pants. He looked at Mike and began whimpering again. “Is there something—” Mulcahy could barely bring himself to ask the question. “What’s going on here?” he finally managed. The color drained from Mike’s face.
“What—” Mike sputtered. “How do you mean?”
“Were you in the gym with Tommy? Just now when I came in?”
“Uh, look, Monsignor.” Mike’s voice cracked as he spoke. “I’m just here for—”
“Were you under the bleachers with this boy? I heard someone else in the gym and you’re the only person here.” The subtext of his questions thudded in the back of Mulcahy’s brain. His mouth felt dry as he formed the words, but they came out with urgency.
“I’m getting the basketballs we need to borrow for drills tomorrow. That’s all.” At Mulcahy’s lack of response, he tried again. “Hey, now. I’m not sure what you mean here, but I’m just helping out—”
“What I mean, Father Pechowski, is that I’ve got a deserted building and a sobbing child who seems to be scared to death of you. Is there something I need to know about why that is?”
Mulcahy knew immediately that he’d given too much away. Mike’s head snapped forward and his eyes narrowed. “I don’t think so, John.” The use of his first name caught Mulcahy off guard. “And I’d be careful about what you imply.”
Mulcahy was taken aback. He’d never had a subordinate speak to him this way. “What did you just say?”
“You heard me, John.” Mike, who was shorter than Mulcahy but seemed to be growing before his very eyes, walked forward, stepping so close that Mulcahy could feel his breath on his neck. Tommy writhed, bucking wildly to get loose. “Seems to me,” Mike said, “I’m the one who came around the corner here and found this kid trying to get away from you with his pants half unbuttoned.” He nodded at Tommy. “So I’d think again about what you say.”
Mulcahy’s vision whited out. He felt himself move, heard noises, and vaguely perceived the pressure of a few blows. When his sight returned, he had Pechowski pinned to the wall, one hand crushing the younger priest’s windpipe while the other punched him repeatedly in the gut, angry jabs that sank deep into the soft parts of Mike’s abdomen and battered the hard bones of his rib cage. Sound flew from Mulcahy’s mouth as he delivered the blows, but his head was swimming, he couldn’t make anything out. Mike’s eyes bulged as he gasped for air. When Mulcahy finally released him, he did so by shoving him across the hallway so he bounced off the far wall and tumbled to the ground. “Do you hear me, you son of a bitch?” he growled, his senses at last returning. “No more after-school help, no more basketball with the kids, no more Snickers bars, and I swear to God if I hear you’ve given anyone a ride home”—he hovered just above Mike’s face, fist drawn back—“I will bury you. Understand me? I will fucking bury you.”
The sound of footsteps pulled him away. He turned to see the silhouette of Tommy Gilroy growing smaller as he ran down the length of the hallway and out a swinging door to the frigid temperatures outside. “Now get up.” Mulcahy spat the words at Mike. “And go clean the vomit in that gym.”
When he walked out to the brightly lit parking lot, he found Tommy near Bill’s car. Bill was wrapping Tommy in a blanket and putting him into the backseat.
“Everything okay?” Bill asked, his gaze falling on Mulcahy’s hands, already swelling and turning a sickening purple.
“It’s going to be,” Mulcahy replied. Bill’s intuition told him this was a conversation best continued later, if ever. He shut the door on Tommy and got back behind the wheel. Mulcahy’s knuckles wouldn’t cooperate when he tried to open the passenger-door handle. He was just about to give up when the door popped open. From inside, Tommy had reached over the seat and pulled the handle. Mulcahy tried to smile at the boy, but for both of them it came out as more of a grimace.
*
Two days later, on the recommendation of his superiors, Father Michael Pechowski was enrolled for a transfer out of Saint Gabriel’s to pursue missionary work in the rural mountain villages of Brazil. For his prompt action and discreet handling of the situation, Mulcahy received commendations from his church superiors. Nearly fourteen months later, in a move those same leaders would many years later have to defend in a separate abuse investigation, Mulcahy was made a bishop.
This same discretion served him well when he was contacted by Milton Casey looking for advice. Given the amount of attention focused on the Boston archdiocese’s sexual-abuse scandal and on Mulcahy in particular, he knew it would be best for Casey and Wyncott if he remained in the background. But he also knew what Owen knew and what was at stake for the Church. More importantly, he knew how badly Casey needed votes. There had to be a way for both sides to get what they needed, and Mulcahy had just the solution.
The proposal should come from Owen. Mulcahy had discussed it with him, and Owen agreed. And although archdiocese attorneys had developed it along with an impact-an
d-feasibility analysis, it was decided that Casey should be guided to arrive at the clever solution on his own. Political egos were sensitive, Mulcahy had learned in his many years with the Church, and navigating them could ensure success or failure with the same amount of ease.
In the end, if the plan worked, the Church would avoid over $700 million in losses, and Casey would avoid a defeat on election day. And seventy million Catholic votes were worth at least that much, weren’t they?
CHAPTER 6
Abingdon Hall, which housed the president’s office at Ignatius University, was a large eighteenth-century stone building that sat in the middle of campus. The top of its stained-glass cupola sprouted a large cross on which seagulls and pigeons usually perched (and sometimes defecated) in an act of defiance not even the most irreverent of Ignatius students would consider. In front of the building, a statue dedicated to Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore and founder of Maryland as a haven for Catholic colonists, stood piously gazing at the sky. Behind the building, a less stately statue of Saint Ignatius himself sprang from a misshapen knoll left over from an archaeological dig some fifteen years before. This Ignatius stood on what resembled a golden diving board, hilariously posed not unlike the Birth of Venus with swiveled hips and outstretched hands. The forefinger of the saint’s right hand was twice the length of all his other fingers and pointed in a freakish way at the cupola’s cross. Ignatius’s nose was obscenely long, and it wasn’t unusual to find banana peels, beer cups, or even a condom hanging on it after a weekend of drunken debauchery. Ingram had hated the statue. In his letters to Peter he referred to it as an erectile dysfunction advertisement and lamented the need to place it somewhere visible simply because it had been sculpted by the feckless son of a prominent donor.
The Shepherd's Calculus Page 3