In God's House (13 page)

Rossi insisted we open the doors between our adjoining rooms in the Monteleone Hotel on Royal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was after midnight. I heard him ordering cheeseburgers, ice cream and soft drinks on the phone.

When room service knocked, he hollered, “Hey Ren, I’m on a call. Get the door. Pay him. Tip good. One of the burgers and Cokes is for you.”

When Rossi came into my room, I had not touched the cheeseburger. I was working on a legal pad, trying to make an outline of a plan I hoped to be able to unveil for the archbishop, bishop, their legal counsel and the insurance lawyers in the morning.

“Look here, Renon. I been wanting to say something all day, but we had to do that thing up at Morgan’s Hope.”

Rossi was dressed in baggy boxer shorts, dark dress socks, an old fashioned undershirt and a large holy medal around his neck. He had a bowl of ice cream in one hand, and a Coke in the other, and a burger balanced on the glass of Coke. He set the ice-cream bowl on the bed opposite mine. When he sat on the bed, some of the ice cream dripped onto the covers. Rossi stared at the mess a moment and chose to ignore it.

I pushed the pad aside and laid the pen on it. “Shoot.”

“You plead the sick priest to life in prison and the problem is gone. You do it before that Kane Chaisson prick has his argument
to make his lawsuit public, before anything at all happens, before the public knows anything. You do this thing, plead the priest to life in prison, and the problems will begin to go away. The first thing the media will find out is that this mental defective took his medicine. Big story maybe, but a one-day story, a two-day story, not much really. It’s in the best interest of the priest, his own family, the kids and their families, the diocese, the bishop, everyone in Amalie and Thiberville, every Catholic everywhere. You can end this damned thing before it begins.”

“I don’t see it that—”

“End it before it starts. And a good end, Renon. People will be sick to hear what the priest allegedly did, but none of the details you told me about in the files of the psychologist will come out. People will feel sorry for the children and their families, and the bishop, and everyone who had to deal with this – even you.”

“No, Joe. Not a chance I would plead him guilty at this stage. Forget it.”

Rossi almost roared. “Listen, dammit! This shit has to end before it begins. Jon Bendel’s a damned good lawyer and he’s been at it a lot longer than you. Jon’s got a big office full of lawyers. One whole area ain’t nothing but tits and typewriters.”

“Your point being?”

“Jon said his people researched it, the whole country, every damned jurisdiction, and there has never been a public civil and criminal mess involving a priest and a diocese like the one that could happen here. Don’t you think there is a reason there was never a mess like the one that’s fixing to happen here? It’s because smart people stopped it before it got started.”

“Francis Dubois is entitled to a defense,” I said.

“Entitled? He ain’t entitled to shit. That’s what he’s entitled to. Not shit. What about the families and children down there in Amalie? Do they count? What are they entitled to, Renon? You gonna put thousands of people through pain and a crisis of faith for this monster of a motherfucker – so he can get a trial for things we all know he’s guilty of? What the fuck?”

“Look, Joe, I can’t stomach Dubois or what he did. The whole business makes me sick. The things that man did are monstrous. But I’m his lawyer, ya know. All the DA would accept today in a guilty plea would be a life sentence. I really think if Dubois believes he has to serve a life sentence, he’ll kill himself. I believe that would happen. I think my obligation to my client, at a minimum, is to not participate in a plan that I think may end his life.”

“So this priest kills himself. So what? Your obligation as a human being is to the common good, Renon. Dubois ain’t no kind of human being. The first time he used his Roman collar to molest a child, he forfeited his right to be considered a human being.”

“I need to get some sleep.”

“In the morning, you tell the archbishop and everyone in that room you are going to plead him to life in prison. Then you call the DA and arrange a court date for next week, then the diocese will release a statement to the media, then you tell your client he’s gonna serve life. And if he kills himself—”

“You can talk a hundred years, Joe. The answer will be no. Dubois is obviously a very sick man. Probably he deserves to be incarcerated for a long time. I think that will happen. But he damned well deserves treatment for the way he is, for whatever makes him this way. It is Dubois’s interests I represent, only his interests.”

“If you have your way, there will be the torture and agony of a long drawn-out legal mess with all the media crap around it. You have the power to end this ordeal for the priest, for the priest’s fine family we saw in Morgan’s Hope tonight, for the little kids and their families in Amalie, for all the people of Thiberville, and for all the good priests of the diocese, for the innocent bishop and all the innocent priests – for the greater good, Renon.”

I got up, went into the bathroom, wet a hand towel, turned the shower on hot, closed the door and returned to the bedroom. I wiped up the ice cream off the bed cover.

Rossi lit the cigarette he had been holding, choked on the smoke, and choked on whatever curse was coming out of him. I quickly stripped, opened the door of the bathroom, which was now filled with steam, readjusted the water temperature, and stepped into the shower.

Rossi stormed into the steam-filled bathroom, screaming above the noise of the shower. “Can you hear me? I’m saying it will all be on your head, Renon Chattelrault, all on your head, and you’ll be finished. Do you really think you can walk around town after defending a cocksucker like this? Do you? Do you? You gotta act for the common good.”

From inside the shower stall, I shouted back, “I told you, Joe. He’s entitled to a defense.”

Rossi climbed into the shower with me, wearing his undershirt, boxer shorts and socks. When his cigarette got soaked he tossed it to the bottom of the bathtub. When he got soaked, he screamed, “I heard ya. I already told you what he’s entitled to. Not shit.”

I stepped out of the shower, toweled off and pulled on sweat pants.

If I had not known Joe Rossi all of my life, I might have thought he was crazy. But having known him, and having worked political campaigns with him, having represented clients in cases Rossi had an interest in, having done favors for him, and having spent weekends at his duck camp, I knew Rossi was just crazy like a fox, as sly as a fox and far more dangerous. If only he had been the buffoon he sometimes pretended to be.

Rossi followed me to the bedroom. “Now look what you done, goddammit. Only pair of socks I got with me.”

I laughed. “Look in the mirror, Joe. Your comb-over collapsed. You look like some kind of cartoon.”

“Yeah? Fuck you, Ren.”

Rossi picked up what was left of my cheeseburger and took a huge bite. As he approached the door to our adjoining rooms, he spoke with food in his mouth. “Ya know, I love ya, kid. Really. If I had a son, I’d want you. Ever since I used to watch you play football
on Friday nights. You’re a great guy in some ways, and other ways you’re just plain fucked up. You oughta pray over this. Don’t you fucking pray, you son-of-a-bitch?”

“No.”

“You don’t pray?”

“Seems like begging to me. I talk with God.”

“Well, goddammit, talk to your God tonight. If I can’t get no sense in ya, maybe your God can.”

Rossi looked over his shoulder again. “Ask God what’s right.”

“I already know what’s right, Joe. And I don’t think God listens in on fucked-up conversations like this. People who talk about killing others or having them kill themselves – for the common good or for any other reason.”

Later I heard Rossi on the phone talking to Jon Bendel. He was speaking in a low tone, but the combination of his booming voice and the crack in the door allowed me to hear him. “We screwed the pooch, Jon. Fucked up. We told him we wanted him to represent the priest and that’s what the son-of-a-bitch is doing.”

There was a pause and then I heard Rossi say, “So, yeah, it was my fuck-up to get him involved in this shit. You gotta get him uninvolved in the Dubois deal. Fire his fucking ass off the case before he brings the cathedral down on our heads.”

I had been asleep three hours when the phone started ringing. As I picked up the handset, I switched on a lamp and looked at my watch. 6:05 a.m. My voice cracked out a hoarse “Hello”.

“Mr. Chattelrault, I am sorry to wake you up. You said we could reach you here. It's early, I know, but I got work at the plant over in Texas and I gotta go in a minute.”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“This is Walt.”

There was a pause. It seemed neither of us was going to talk.

“Walter… Walt Dubois. I was at Momma and Daddy's house last night. I had a Saints shirt on.”

“Yes, I remember you.” I remembered his grin when I described what his brother had done to the altar boys.

“Well, last night you never said the word. The word for what Nicky is. The word is pedophile. That is what he is. He's a pedophile.”

“Ooo-kaaay,” I said slowly.

“I'm a pedophile too, Mr. Chattelrault. Same as Nicky.”

I lowered my voice, not wanting to rouse the snoring mass of man that was Joe Rossi in the next room. “Walt, why are you telling me this?”

“I thought ya needed to know. Nicky knows. I don't want what he's done to get me in trouble. Can I get drug into this?”

The obvious struck me hard like a hatchet. “Walt, did you and
your brother ever share… you know…” I stopped talking and held my breath for the answer.

“No. Never. Nicky and I don't even like each other. I can't stand him. Ever since he went off to the seminary, he believes he's better than all of us. Ya know the truth? He's worse. He's worse than me, worse than everybody.”

“Who else knows this about you, Walt?”

“Nobody who would tell. A psychologist in Shreveport knows. My two ex-wives know.”

“You told them?”

“No, one of them caught me with her son. The other one's two sons told on me.”

“Look, Walt, we both have places to go this morning. Don't tell anybody about this. Don't even tell anyone you spoke with me about it. I am kind of busy these days. But I will get back up to Morgan's Hope to talk to you. And for Christ's sake—”

“I know. I ain't touched no kid in a long time, but I know what you don't know.”

“And?”

“Lemme tell ya. You can't do nothing for Nicky. Nobody can do nothing for me and I ain't even as bad as Nicky.”

“Okay, Walt. Stay in touch.”

“Yes, sir. Thanks for talking to me.”

I rang off, opened the drapes and watched barge traffic on the Mississippi River. It was too difficult to process what I had just heard, so I stored it. It seemed important to me that two of the Dubois siblings were afflicted in the same way.

I had breakfast brought to the room before I woke Rossi. Joe grumbled and moaned that I'd kept him up all night and then he attacked his breakfast and raided mine. I asked if he knew the
directions
to the place where the meeting was being held that morning.

“Saint John Major Seminary? Yeah. It's the Louisiana priest factory. Your boy, Dubois, woulda come through there. Ya know, I was gonna be a priest once upon a time.”

“You? A priest?”

“Yeah. I gave up on being a priest – thought it would bore me. See, a priest just hears the exact same laundry list of shit all the time. I got too short a temper to listen to people whine and whimper and want assurance that God is on their side. Hell, son, the truth is that God ain't on everybody's side. Ain't that obvious?”

While Rossi polished off both breakfasts, I struggled with my tie for the third time in front of the mirror. The tie didn't look bad, but it didn't look quite right either.

As we approached the seminary, Rossi said, “I wanna bring some melons back to Thiberville.” He made me pull over at a roadside fruit-and-vegetable stand on the curb of a big boulevard in front of the seminary compound. Joe was looking at all the produce, picking out things and handing them to me. The proprietor wore a faded and frayed New Orleans Saints football cap.

“Like the Saints?” Joe asked.

“What can I tell ya? Used to be we only had two things could break our hearts down here – the weather and our children. Then we got the Saints.”

“You had this stand long?”

“I was working with my old man here back when I was a kid and shoulda been in school. Back when we sold real produce. See this melon you got here? Everyone knows God don't let these melons grow at this time of year nowhere. But now they got these big sheds that cover acres of ground. And they control the temperature, soil composition, light, moisture, every damned thing in those places. They can trick a plant into thinking it's in moonlight at noon and that it's summer when it's winter.”

“Well, the strawberries look great,” I said. “Could you put the strawberries in a separate bag?”

“I'll sack it anyway you want.”

“You been here all these years?”

“Yep. Like I says, my old man was here before. Used to be free here 'cause it's a public easement and ya just make a little donation
to whoever is mayor. But the last archbishop, that Yankee prick from Noo Yawk they brought in here, tried to charge me rent. Everything's different than before.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I've known every sum-bitch come through this seminary the last sixty years, known every archbishop since before the one who became a cardinal and went to Chicago. He was the best one. He had that girlfriend, remember dat? He got in lots of trouble for giving her a bunch of money. She was a sweetheart, sweet as you please. They used to get their produce here. I could always tell when the old boy had knocked off a piece. You know you can tell by looking at a man if he's had any lately. Like, take your friend here,” he punched Rossi's fat tummy and laughed. “I can tell this guy ain't had none since at least Mardi Gras, maybe longer.”

I laughed. Rossi furrowed his brow and opened his mouth to make a smart retort, but the man cut in.

“It's all changed now,” the man said. “When I was a kid, my old man let me play football with the priests and seminarians right there on the big grass lawn. It's bigger than a football field. They used to play ball out there all the time. Rough games with scratches, bruises and blood. And there was a gym inside with a boxing ring where they used to pound the crap out of each other. No more. Not for thirty years now. The only thing that's ever on that big lawn now is a lawnmower. All the boxing stuff, weights and all that is gone from the gym. Some seminarian told me they painted the gym, floored it with carpet, changed the lights, and put backgammon tables in there now. What the hell is a backgammon table?”

Rossi walked toward my car. Over his shoulder, he said, “Pay the man, Renon.”

The meeting room in Saint John Seminary resembled the great hall of a Rhine castle I once saw. It was two stories tall with a vaulted ceiling. Heavy dark-wood panels were inlaid at eye level
with depictions of pastoral scenes. In one corner near leaded glass windows, there was a collection of antique crucifixes.

Rossi and I were minutes late. Seats had been reserved for us at one end of the long oak table next to Jonathan Bendel, the diocesan lawyer for Thiberville, Monsignor Moroux, and Bishop Reynolds, a short, heavy-set man in a black suit and roman collar, with a crucifix on a long chain around his neck. It was the first time I had seen him in person but there was no time for introductions.

At the other end of the table was Archbishop Donnegan, dressed similarly to Reynolds. I recognized him from newspaper photographs. Flanking the table were a dozen other men, some in clerical garb, some in suits. Every lawyer involved in the eleven civil suits filed against the archbishop, his archdiocese, Bishop Reynolds and his Thiberville diocese, named and unnamed monsignors, and others who had supervised Father Dubois in his career was here. The suits were wearing nice ties. The only one of them I recognized was Thomas Quinlan, the archbishop's lawyer, and for the first few moments we were there, Quinlan seemed to be in charge. He introduced me and Rossi to the group, saying, “Renon just spent a few days with Father Dubois, and maybe we should give him the floor to begin.”

I felt nervous and said nothing, kind of hoping someone would take my turn. I wanted a feel for the room before I moved forward with the plan I had outlined in the hotel.

A bald man at the far end of the table addressed me. He had his spectacles propped on his forehead so that they reflected light from the ceiling chandeliers and made him look like a four-eyed monster.

“Renon,” he began. “My name is Robert Blassingame, of Miller, Sikes, Wilder, Gentry, Donebane and Doise. I don't know that it is a good idea that we hear from you at all. I don't even know if it is a good idea that you are in this room. There are many different interests represented here, which include the archdiocese, the Diocese of Thiberville, and a consortium of insurance companies who had policies in play during the period covered by the
plaintiff's claims. I don't think your client's interests are aligned with any of ours.”

“My client is willing for me to share the truth with you about his conduct and he is also willing to work with me to identify every victim—”

Interrupting, a short, skinny man stood and picked up his briefcase, saying, “I am going to leave because I don't want to know what the priest said. I don't think any of the counsel representing insurance interests ought to be in this kind of discussion at this stage.”

“I'm telling you that I have information which may define or delineate the exposure your various clients may have in these cases.”

Jon Bendel made a motion indicating I should stop talking. He leaned over and quietly said, “Renon, step outside with me.” To the room, Bendel said, “Give us a moment, please.”

Outside in the hallway, Jon Bendel took a long drink from a water fountain. “Shit, the chemicals they put in the water in New Orleans are probably worse than the poison they're trying to get out of it.” He shifted to me. “Get off that crap about identifying the priest's victims. Quinlan was an idiot to ask you to talk. We're supposed to be discussing Chaisson's motion to try to make his Rachou case public. Nothing else.”

Once we were back in the room, I looked at Mr. Blassingame with his glasses propped on his forehead, and addressed him. “I am not concerned with what any of you want to hear. I am telling you that there is an obligation all of us in this room have – a moral obligation – to reach out to all the Dubois victims we can find. We're talking about the Catholic Church, not some soulless corporation.”

Blassingame exploded. “We are not in the business of issuing invitations to people to sue us. That's that.”

Quinlan raised his hand to silence me as I started to speak again. I stopped. Quinlan spoke. “Let's discuss what we are here to discuss: Kane Chaisson's motion to unseal the Rachou suit.”

Next to me, Bendel scrawled four words on his legal pad: “
Son-of
-a-bitch”. He tore the sheet from the pad, showed it to me, and then neatly folded it before placing it in the side pocket of his coat. For a moment I thought Bendel was referring to Blassingame and I concurred with his opinion. Then something made me realize the reference was to me.

I spoke out of turn again on the subject of Chaisson's motion. “What is there to discuss about the motion to break the seal? No law in this state or any other state allows a plaintiff or defendant, acting alone or in concert, to keep public documents out of the public record. The public records doctrine is one of the strongest legal precepts we have. If anything, I think we should all be talking about preparing statements to release to the media before the suit is unsealed by the court on Monday. A kind of pre-emptive strike, getting our word out first, maybe a public letter by the bishop to be read at Masses this Sunday, released to the media and then—”

Apparently Blassingame had been elected captain or something, as he was the only one who spoke, and he interrupted me again. “I don't think this issue even applies to your interests, to your client, and thus I see no reason for you to be addressing anything.”

I charged at Blassingame. “Whether or not it becomes public knowledge that my client committed thousands of criminal acts against more than a dozen children is indeed material to his interests. Father Dubois can go to prison for life. I don't want any of this to be public knowledge any more than any of you do, but I know that it will be made public. A freshman law student would know this. There is no authority anywhere that would allow a court to rule differently.”

Jon Bendel cleared his throat. “I have information that Kane Chaisson's Rachou case is being reassigned to a new judge today. I have reason to believe the new judge will be empathetic with our position.”

They fixed a frigging judge!
I thought
. Jeeezus Christ, they fixed a judge
.

Blassingame smiled broadly. “That's good work, Jon. I don't know how you do things down there in Thiberville, but that's what we count on you for.”

Archbishop Donnegan turned to his lawyer, Tommy Quinlan, and asked, “Is there anything more to discuss?”

“No, Excellency.”

The archbishop stood and said, “I thank you all for coming. May the Holy Spirit keep us all safe and guide the court to render justice on Monday, and keep this lawsuit sealed, avoiding scandal to Holy Mother Church.”