MD05 - The Confession

by Sheldon Siegel

  THE CONFESSION

  Sheldon Siegel

  Books by Sheldon Siegel

  Special Circumstances

  Incriminating Evidence

  Criminal Intent

  Final Verdict

  The Confession

  Judgment Day

  Perfect Alibi

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Acknowledgements

  THE CONFESSION

  Sheldon Siegel

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

  Sheldon M. Siegel, Inc.

  Copyright © 2004 Sheldon M. Siegel, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ISBN# 9780983006206

  For my friends and colleagues at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP

  Chapter 1

  “A Sliding Scale for Sin

  “A high-profile lawsuit against the San Francisco archdiocese for allegedly covering up a pattern of sexual abuse by a prominent priest was put on hold when the plaintiff’s attorney apparently committed suicide.”

  — San Francisco Chronicle. Tuesday, December 9.

  “Bless me father, for I have sinned.”

  My rote recitation of the traditional catechism is met with a mixture of piety and detached amusement by my friend and seminary classmate, Father Ramon Aguirre, who is sitting on the other side of the portal in a musty confessional booth at the back of St. Peter’s Catholic Church at eight P.M. on Tuesday, December ninth. The organ is silent and the bells from the tower are being drowned out by the rain that’s beating against the vaulted ceiling three stories above us. The modest wooden structure in San Francisco’s historic Mission District was erected in the 1880s and survived the 1906 earthquake, but its good fortune ran out almost a hundred years later when it was severely damaged by fire. It was rebuilt a few years ago and looks much the same as it did when my parents brought me here for my baptism a half century ago.

  Ramon is fluent in Spanish, but there is no trace of an accent when he asks, “How long has it been since your last confession, Mike?” Nowadays, relatively few Catholics–even recovering ones like me–get to confess their sins to a priest who knows them by name.

  “Do we have to go through this ritual every time we get together?”

  “I’m just doing my job.”

  “Do I get any dispensation for all the Hail Marys I said when I was a priest?”

  “You can’t use Hail Marys like frequent flyer miles. You know the drill. How long has it been?”

  “When was the last time I saw you, Ramon?”

  “About a month ago.”

  “That was the last time I went to confession.”

  The pews are empty and a few votive candles are flickering near the altar. St. Peter’s is a reminder of simpler times when this area was populated by Irish immigrants. My parents grew up a few blocks from here on opposite sides of Garfield Square, but that’s ancient history. Like many of our neighbors who wanted more room for their growing families, we moved from our cramped apartment to a small house in the foggy Sunset District forty years ago as part of a larger exodus from the inner city that was taking place in many metropolitan areas at the time. My old neighborhood has been home to a working class Latino community ever since, and the sweet aroma of burritos, salsa and fresh fruit permeates the modest commercial strip around the corner on Twenty-fourth Street. The refurbished church is in pretty good shape thanks to a substantial infusion of cash from the archdiocese, but the residents of the community lack the resources to maintain many of the bungalows and low-rise apartment buildings that date back to the late nineteenth century. Things are especially grim near the Valencia Gardens Housing Project and the BART station at Sixteenth and Mission, where drug dealers and prostitutes outnumber conventional businesses. Parts of the neighborhood gentrified during the dot-com frenzy, but the upgrades went on hold when the NASDAQ crashed.

  Ramon is also a throwback to an earlier era. The politically-astute and utterly pragmatic priest is a worthy successor to the legacy of the legendary Peter Yorke, who was born in Galway in 1887 and plied his trade in this very building in the early part of the last century. Father Yorke was a labor organizer, newspaper publisher and political gadfly. Ramon understands that he can better tend to his flock if he has the resources to do so, and he got into a little trouble a few years ago when he accepted donations from a produce wholesaler who supplemented his income with drug and prostitution money. To this day, Ramon insists he didn’t know the funds were dirty. He used the cash to feed the poor, and neither the DA nor the archdiocese was inclined to pursue it. He opens his church to the homeless on Thursdays and there is a dance in the social hall every Saturday night where he always takes a turn at the mike. The Chronicledubbed him the “Rock and Roll Reverend.”

  His tone has the requisite level of priest-like judgment when he says, “How often do you stop by to chat with God?”

  “Occasionally.” My record has been spotty since I left the priesthood almost twenty years ago. “Is this interrogation necessary?”

  “I’m in the business of saving souls and yours is at the top of my list. You’re a test case for the greatest challenge of my career.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m trying to get my first lawyer into heaven.”

  Sometimes I miss the good old days when priests were stern taskmasters instead of aspiring stand-up comics. “What are my odds?” I ask.

  “Not good. I have to hold you to a higher standard because you used to be one of us.”

  “There’s a sliding scale for sin?”

  “Yes.”

  “That rule wasn’t in effect when I was a priest.”

  “It is now.” He chuckles and says, “One of the thi
ngs I love about this job is that I get a lot of latitude in deciding what constitutes a sin.”

  It’s one of the many reasons I’m no longer in his line of work. I never felt qualified to sit in judgment of people who tortured themselves with guilt for things that didn’t seem all that sinful to me. The nice people felt compelled to confess to trivial things while the schmucks were running amok on the streets. I developed a reputation as the “easy priest” at St. Anne’s in the Sunset where I worked for three years before I threw in the towel and went to law school. My lackadaisical attitude in meting out punishments was met with greater enthusiasm by the kids in my parish than by my superiors.

  “How’s Rosie?” he asks.

  “She’s fine.”

  His simple question has a more complicated answer. Rosita Fernandez is my law partner, significant other and best friend. She’s also my ex-wife. We’ve covered a lot of territory since we met at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office sixteen years ago. We’ve managed to get married, have a daughter who just turned twelve, get divorced, and start a law practice. I mixed in an unsatisfying stint at a big law firm, and we tried our hand at being law professors at my alma mater, Boalt Hall. That latest experiment came to an end about a year after it started.

  Our last high profile case was eighteen months ago when we represented an indigent man who was accused of stabbing a Silicon Valley hotshot behind a liquor store on Sixth Street. We tried to take a break after the case ended, but we discovered that Rosie was pregnant and we welcomed an energetic baby boy in January. This led to rampant and unsubstantiated speculation that we might get married again. Some people are meant to live together, but Rosie and I aren’t, and we decided to continue to live in non-marital, noncohabitative semi-bliss in our respective places in Marin County. It isn’t an ideal arrangement, but life is full of compromises, and over the last eleven months, we’ve come to appreciate the three-block de-militarized zone that separates her house from my apartment. After reembarking upon parenthood shortly after turning fifty, I’ve decided to hold off on any additional life cycle events for the foreseeable future.

  “Has there been any recurrence of the cancer?” he asks.

  Rosie had a mastectomy three years ago. “She’s cancer-free,” I report.

  “That’s great news.”

  Yes, it is.

  “So,” he says, “have you given any thought to making her an honest woman?”

  He always tries. I wag a finger at him and say, “Priests aren’t allowed to do any suggestive selling. You’re supposed to sit back and listen while I tell you all the horrible things I’ve done.” I’ve always loved the fact that the Church has rules for everything.

  “I hate doing confessions for ex-priests,” he says, “and lawyers are even worse. They argue about everything.”

  Yes, we do.

  He pleads his case. “I wasn’t trying to elicit a confession,” he insists. “I was simply giving you some helpful post-marital or, best case, premarital counseling.”

  Priests are even better at parsing than lawyers.

  He tees it up again. “Have you and Rosie thought about trying a more conventional relationship? It would make my boss happy and I could check off one more item on my to-do list. I’ll put in a good word with God if you think it would help.”

  “Technically,” I say, “what we’re doing isn’t a sin.” We got a civil divorce, but we never got one from the Church. “According to you guys, we’re still married, so you have to lay off.”

  We’ve covered this territory and he changes the subject. “How’s Grace?”

  “Fine.” Our daughter is a good kid who is showing her first signs of independence. Things are going to get more interesting when her braces come off and her figure fills out. God help us when her first boyfriend shows up at the door.

  “Do you take her to church every once in awhile?”

  “From time to time.” She isn’t wildly enthusiastic about it and I don’t push. I’m hoping she’ll be able to find a relationship with God on her own terms.

  “And Tommy?”

  Over the years, the name Tommy has had multiple meanings in our family. Originally, it referred to my father, Thomas James Charles Daley, Sr., who was a San Francisco cop for four decades until he succumbed to lung cancer just after Grace was born. For twenty-two glorious years, it also meant my older brother, Tom, Jr., who was a star quarterback at St. Ignatius and Cal before he went to Vietnam and never came back. Nowadays, it means the active eleven-month-old lad with a charming disposition and strong lungs that he exercises at four o’clock every morning. We’re hoping he’ll sleep through the night sometime before he leaves for college.

  “He’s been a little colicky,” I say, “but he’s doing great.” Rosie says that any woman who has a baby after she turns forty should hire a stunt-mom.

  “Give them a hug for me.”

  “I will.” I sound like Grace when I say, “Can we get dinner now? I’m hungry.”

  “You still haven’t confessed to anything. You must have done something.”

  When I was a kid, my brother and I became adept at making up a few sins on our way to church if we hadn’t done anything especially egregious during the week. If all else failed, we’d swear at each other, then we’d go inside and confess. “If I admit to something, will you stop bugging me about getting married again?”

  “Seems fair.”

  It strikes me as amusing that I choose to confess my sins to a man who was known as the “Party Priest” at the seminary. We used to go out for a few beers a couple of nights a week while we were studying to become God’s emissaries and we had to cover for each other from time to time. He’s toned things down considerably since he became the head honcho at St. Peter’s and freely acknowledges that it wouldn’t set a good example if they found him passed out on the steps of the rectory with an empty beer can in his hand.

  I go with an old standby. “I said a bad word in court today and I took the Lord’s name in vain when Tommy’s diaper exploded last night.”

  “That’s the best you can do?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  His tone turns appropriately judgmental when he says, “You shouldn’t swear in front of the children.” He lets me off with a light sentence and the usual admonition to set a better example. I promise to play nice, but I’m reasonably sure my ticket to hell was punched the day I was admitted to the California Bar.

  # # #

  I dutifully say my Hail Marys and we adjourn to a religious shrine of a different sort. The Taqueria LaCumbre is a hole in the wall on Valencia, about a mile from St. Peter’s. The tiny room isn’t long on ambiance, but the restaurant has been here forever and many of us think the recipe for the pollo asada was handed down directly from God. We’re sitting in the corner and I’m devouring my chicken as Ramon takes a long draw on his second beer. He’s a lanky man with dark brown eyes, a prominent Roman nose and a full head of silver hair. He still plays basketball a couple of nights a week at the Mission YMCA and looks like he could glide down the court with the USF varsity, where he was once a starting forward. Rosie says he’s the sexiest man in the Bay Area. She’s always had a thing for priests.

  His normally ebullient demeanor turns serious when our conversation turns to Church gossip. “It isn’t as much fun as it was when you were still in the business,” he says. “You can’t pick up a newspaper without reading about some priest who was molesting kids or sleeping with his parishioners. You lawyers are a big part of the problem–the lawsuits never stop.”

  The tribulations of the Catholic Church in the early twenty-first century have been well-documented, and the fact that some attorneys have taken the opportunity to line their pockets with legal fees hasn’t gone unnoticed. “Sounds like I got out at the right time,” I say.

  “You were a good priest.”

  I was also an unhappy one. I never had a knack for Church politics and I had no aptitude for raising money. This led to frustration and ultimat
ely depression. Eventually, I went to Ramon for counseling and his steady hand helped me stay the course during a year-long period that was even darker than the worst moments when Rosie and I were getting divorced.

  “I’m more of a politician than a priest,” he says. “Our parish is poor and I spend half my time fund-raising. With the scandals and the economic downturn, people have become terribly cynical.” He tells me about a ninety year-old parishioner whom he visits at a nursing home. “Last time I saw her, she winked at me and said she didn’t have time for sex–and she came to church every Sunday. Imagine how the disenfranchised people are feeling. We’ve become a punch line for David Letterman and the archbishop thinks we can solve the problems with a public relations campaign.”

  Ramon’s propensity for expressing views that run counter to the party line has never endeared him to the Church hierarchy, but in all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never heard this level of frustration in his voice.