by Joseph Flynn
Father Nguyen was sure his Excellency would love to hear him ask for permission to go on a retreat and renew his vow of obedience; to ask for reassignment to another diocese; even to announce that he was leaving the priesthood.
Well, maybe not that last one. The church had relied on immigrants to fill the ranks of the priesthood for a very long time. The Irish and the Poles had answered the call early on in America. They’d been followed by the Latinos. Now, it was the turn of the Asians and Africans. If those last two groups faltered, Holy Mother Church would be in dire trouble.
Or it would finally have to change its doctrine and permit priests to marry. Maybe even ordain women. But with the hard-line conservatives in charge at the Vatican that was unlikely.
“I have a problem, your Excellency,” Father Nguyen said. “Yesterday, I was confronted in my church by a young man who brandished a knife.”
O’Menehy was stunned. “A robbery? Were you hurt? Was anyone hurt?”
These days, the hierarchy had to think not only of their flock’s moral well being, but of their own legal liability. The Church had been sued more often in the past twenty years than in the previous two thousand. There was a clerical joke, a play on Shakespeare, on the strategy the Church should pursue: First, we excommunicate all the lawyers.
Then they could claim all the lawsuits were an anti-Catholic plot.
Father Nguyen answered the bishop, “I escorted the young man into the vestibule and told him not to return. No one was harmed.”
O’Menehy’s gaze turned thoughtful. Father Nguyen was a force in the diocese in so many ways, and now he’d made short work of a man with a knife?
“Is there more to this story, Father?”
“That is why I’m here, your Excellency. I’ve heard this young man’s confession, but his deeds say he is far from truly penitent. In fact, I know he has used the sacrament to insulate himself from punishment.”
“Whose punishment?” the bishop asked.
“The state’s, your Excellency. The Commonwealth of Virginia.”
“That is none of our concern,” O’Menehy said.
The bishop felt his words congeal in his throat, almost making him choke. He firmly believed in what he had said, but by ignoring, or worse, covering up, sexual assaults by members of the clergy on the children of the faithful, the Church had placed itself in great jeopardy.
The Lord would surely mete out appropriate punishment to those who had sinned so grievously. But there was no longer any question in civil society that Divine judgment could not be substituted for jail sentences handed down by secular courts.
“This young man,” Father Nguyen continued, “works for a powerful figure in the Vietnamese immigrant community.”
“You learned this in confession?”
“No,” Father Nguyen said. “It is common knowledge.”
The bishop nodded. The matter was suitable for discussion in that case.
Even so, his Excellency was far from comfortable with what he knew was coming next.
“This powerful figure is Horatio Bao, a lawyer,” Father Nguyen said. “He has a sinister reputation, but he is also a congregant of yours, and a generous contributor to Church charities. The young man with the knife demanded that I accompany him to see Bao.”
The bishop paled. “What did you say?”
“I refused.”
O’Menehy slumped with relief. Realizing his posture constituted a confession of sorts, the possession of guilty knowledge, he straightened up.
He wasn’t fast enough for Father Nguyen to miss the correction.
“I came here, your Excellency, because I am sorely troubled by an evil abuse of the sacrament of Confession,” the priest said. “I thought you might offer me guidance. If you are Horatio Bao’s confessor, you might even have direct empathy for me.”
“That’s enough, Father,” the bishop said, his voice stern. “You’ve not revealed any of the substance of this young man’s confession to me, and I’ll not say anything about any confession I’ve ever heard.”
The two clerics sat in silence, looking past each other, for what seemed like a long time.
Finally, the bishop spoke. “Francis, you’ve been at odds with the teachings of the church for some time.”
Father Nguyen said, “I feel that those among the faithful who are in error would best be helped by drawing them closer to God, not pushing them away.”
O’Menehy leaned forward, “Even if that were so, it is not your place to decide. And you just told me you banished this young fellow from your church. You did so with justification from what you told me, but you gave him the boot nonetheless.”
Father Nguyen bowed his head. “I am far from heaven myself.”
“As so many of us are. But you are not to raise this matter of false confessions to me again. The seal of the confessional is absolute.”
The priest nodded. He completely agreed that the privacy of a sincere confession should be inviolable. But using a sacrament to gag a witness to a crime was an abomination. Of course, if you told the faithful in advance that their priest would be the one to judge the sincerity of their remorse, and would feel free to reveal anything he deemed to be insincere, that would be the end of the sacrament.
These were indeed troubling times for the Church.
Bishop O’Menehy came out from behind his desk, and Father Nguyen dropped to one knee to receive his blessing.
The priest left the bishop’s office feeling certain Horatio Bao had confessed a crime to O’Menehy, as Ricky Lanh Huu had done with him. He’d seen it on the bishop’s face. But he didn’t reveal to the bishop that the former novice, Margaret Sweeney, who now worked with the president’s henchman was investigating a matter that might unmask the crimes confessed to both of them.
A development that would likely result in more shame for the Church.
But the bishop had said he wanted to hear no more about it.
18
As Father Nguyen walked to his car, two men and a woman approached him. It was a measure of the situation in which he found himself that he was glad they were Caucasian, not members of his own ethnic community. He was further reassured when all three smiled at him.
The elder man asked, “Father Francis Nguyen?”
The priest nodded.
“I’m John Kinsale. This is my wife, Georgine, and our son, Patrick.”
“Hello,” Nguyen said.
“We’ve heard great things about you, Father.”
“Exaggerations, I’m sure.”
“Not from our sources, Father. We also heard you’ve had some difficulties with your superiors. Might even become subject to severe discipline. Or worse.”
Francis Nguyen took a step back and examined the three people. He was sure he had never seen any of them before. The husband and wife didn’t look like anyone who’d followed a religious vocation in the past, and the son … well, young white men were far more likely to offer their lives in combat these days than offer them to God. They looked like what they had told him they were: a family.
Father Nguyen asked. “What do you want?”
The woman told him, “We’re from Massachusetts, Father.”
The son added, “We have a church there.”
The father summed things up. “We’re looking for a pastor.”
Magistrate Pruet’s Office, Paris
19
Yves Pruet showed McGill his find: the ceramic tile painted by the immigrant artist, Bertrand Kalou. He pointed out a figure in the painting. And a straight thin vertical line next to it.
“M’sieur Kalou painted this figure of a third man who ventured under the Pont d’Iéna shortly after the fight between M’sieur Kinnard and Thierry Duchamp ended.”
“An eyewitness?” McGill asked. “Did he see the blonde woman?”
“He did, but at a distance, and only from behind.”
McGill looked at the tile again. The view was from an elevated spot, looking down at the Seine and the w
alkway under the bridge where the fight had occurred. The figure of the third man was in the foreground on the near side of the bridge. It was more a suggestion of a man than a detailed likeness. Still, it managed to convey a sense of both bulk and menace.
The president’s henchman pointed at the straight line next to the figure of the man.
“The artist added that? Some sort of scale of measure?”
Pruet nodded. “M’sieur Kalou said the line would indicate the height of an average white Frenchman, approximately 177 centimeters. About five feet ten inches.”
McGill saw that the figure of the man was significantly taller than the line. He looked to Pruet for the numerical difference.
The magistrate told him just over 223 centimeters. “Approximately seven feet four inches.”
“This painter has a good eye for proportion?” McGill asked.
Pruet told him, “I had a friend at the Musée D’Orsay look at his work. He told me M’sieur Kalou has an excellent eye and a respectable talent. He recommended our witness’s work to a gallery he values.”
“Glad something good came out of this,” McGill said.
He looked at the painting again. The artist had, in a few strokes, captured the feeling of a real brute. Someone who would use his size to get whatever he damn well pleased.
Odo, who had been standing by silently, asked, “Is this the big fellow you spoke of earlier, m’sieur? The one who would require more than one opponent?”
McGill took the magazine he’d bought that morning at the riverside stall out of the manila envelope Gabbi had given him.
He tossed the magazine on Pruet’s desk and said, “Here’s a better look at him.”
Odo looked over Pruet’s shoulder at the magazine cover. Le Champion Tacit. The magistrate opened the magazine to the article inside, but most of the text, as Gabbi had told him, had to do with the other two fighters on the cover. The monster got just a throw away line as the man who could turn the whole sport upside down, if the authorities ever dared to let him compete, and he could find an opponent brave enough to enter the ring with him. The writer of the piece identified the monster only by his nom de guerre.
“The Undertaker,” Pruet said. Turning to McGill, he added. “Perhaps you’ll need a fourth man to defeat this one.”
“Or an elephant gun,” Odo offered.
McGill grinned. “If I were at home with this guy, I’d be inclined to use a firearm myself. But over here, I thought I’d better tread lightly.”
Pruet told McGill, “France appreciates your consideration, m’sieur. Perhaps, if we are fortunate, the police will have a net large enough to throw over this fellow.”
“That’d be nice,” McGill agreed, “if we can get him to do something stupid in front of a bunch of cops who are ready for him.”
“Touché,” the magistrate said.
“Just the fact, though, that he was on the scene where Thierry Duchamp died is enough to make an American cop suspicious.”
Pruet nodded, and Odo confirmed, “A French flic, as well.”
“So did you find out if there was a football match coming up where Thierry Duchamp’s absence would affect the betting line?” McGill asked.
Pruet steepled his hands and looked at the president’s henchman.
“It is more complicated than that,” he said, “and perhaps to you it will seem absurd.”
“Try me,” McGill said.
“Thierry Duchamp’s team, the Paris Football Club, has qualified to play for the Champions League Winner’s Cup.”
McGill gave the magistrate a blank look. The two Frenchmen exchanged a glance and shrugged. Americans.
Odo explained, “International competition, best team from each country.”
“From Dublin to Moscow,” Pruet specified. “Normally, France would be uniformly exhilarated by the good fortune of the Paris team.”
“Except?” McGill asked.
“Except Thierry Duchamp, in many ways, had upset the old order. He was a scoring machine—which was entirely contrary to the normal style of French teams.”
Odo, the Corsican, made a rude noise in his throat.
The magistrate shrugged. “I am not a great football fan, so I cannot judge. France’s usual style of play was to emphasize defense. Some people …” He glanced at Odo. “… perhaps many, find this approach less than entertaining. But an equal number are wedded to the old way. They would consider a team that won the Cup by virtue of offense to be a triumph of burlesque.”
McGill, a Chicago White Sox fan, had long despaired of ever seeing his team win a World Series. When they finally did win in 2005, he wouldn’t have cared if they’d scored all their runs by dint of bases on balls, fielding errors, and hit batsmen.
“Yeah,” he said, “that is hard for me to understand. Very hard to believe it would be worth the taking of a man’s life.”
Odo leaned forward. “As you yourself suggested, we do not believe that was the original intent.”
“Our theory,” the magistrate said, “is that this Undertaker fellow was meant to do no more than hobble Thierry Duchamp. Slow him down to play at the traditional pace.”
McGill laughed, then held up a placatory hand.
“Gentlemen, please believe me, I’m not laughing at you. I had a similar idea myself. But now that we’ve seen a photo of The Undertaker, would either of you hire him to hurt someone just a little? I was pretty much told he’d bite your head off as soon as look at you.”
The two Frenchmen looked at the behemoth’s picture again.
Pruet said, “I would not enter into any business arrangement with such a fellow. But we will be closer to knowing the truth once we find the blonde woman.”
McGill reached into the envelope again. He took out the photo Gabbi had given him and tossed it on Pruet’s desk.
“Great,” he said. “Let me introduce you to The Undertaker’s girlfriend.”
Le Marais, Paris
20
The literate gypsy known as Bela, using a public phone outside a Chinese restaurant, called the telephone number for the United States embassy he had found in the Metropolitan Directory.
Marjorie Jean (MarJean) Mathers of Austin, Texas, employed by the State Department for three months and beginning her second week in Paris, answered, “Ambassade des Etats-Unis.”
“I speak English,” Bela said. He did not want his meaning to get lost in translation.
“How nice,” MarJean replied, “so do I. How may I help you?”
“I wish to speak with the president’s henchman.”
MarJean knew immediately whom the man meant: James Jackson McGill, formally the First Gentleman of the United States. She knew all that, but at her pay grade she had no idea he was in Paris. She could only make an assumption of where he might be.
“I’m sorry, but he’s in Washington, D.C.”
“He is?”
“That’s where he works.”
“Nowhere else?”
Bela began to think his kinsmen might have been taken in by someone in their own line of work, conning the gullible. Had he kidnapped that horrible gadjo woman for no good reason? Would there be no huge ransom?
“I haven’t heard that Mr. McGill works abroad,” MarJean said
She was unsure now how much she should speculate about the activities of the president’s husband. She thought maybe she should call her supervisor, but if the man on the phone was just a crank, she would be expected to dispose of him by herself.
“Perhaps if you can tell me what this is all about …” Wouldn’t hurt to fish a little bit.
Bela recognized a baited hook when one was dangled in front of him. But what choice did he have, if there were still some gain to be had. Perhaps he was only dealing with a fool here.
The gypsy said, “I have the woman he wants.”
Okay, now it was getting weird, MarJean thought. Her caller ID had automatically tagged the guy’s phone number once she connected to it. Now, she brought up the p
hone’s location on a city map. He was calling from a public phone in Le Marais — wherever that was.
All calls to the embassy were recorded for security purposes, so MarJean had to be careful how she phrased the thought at the front of her mind.
“Are you saying, sir, that Mr. James J. McGill is here in Paris and he asked you to procure a woman for him?”
The woman was a fool, Bela thought. She thought … well, he did say he had a woman for a man. And if the woman he did have wasn’t a putain, he wasn’t a Rom. Still, there had to be more to it than that. If an important man simply wanted sex, any pretty woman would do, and the boy, Alexandru, had said the president’s henchman already had an attractive woman with him. So—
“It is not like that,” Bela said.
“Well, what is it like, sir?”
“I don’t know!”
MarJean, unruffled, summarized, “You have a woman for Mr. McGill, but you don’t know why you have her?”
The infuriating gadjo woman was right, Bela thought. He didn’t know why he’d kidnapped the putain. He should be angry only at himself. He was the fool here.
“I hope, sir,” MarJean said, pressing a button to alert embassy security, “that the woman you have for Mr. McGill without knowing why is with you voluntarily. If she isn’t, I urge you to release her immediately.”
The embassy woman’s words were softly spoken, but they raised the hair on Bela’s neck. She was not a fool at all. She understood criminal activity was at play in his call. He looked around to see if a squad of flics was closing in on him. But he saw only a bovine crowd of milling gadje tourists. Still, the police might be just around the corner.
Bela instructed the embassy woman firmly, “Listen to me. I have the woman the president’s henchman wants. He knows why he wants her even if I do not. If he does not pay me well for her in the next twenty-four hours, I will throw her in the Seine.”
“But, sir—”
Bela hung up on MarJean.
It was only then he realized he had not given the embassy woman a way for the president’s henchman to contact him. He would have to call back.