In God's House (48 page)

The first time Julie and I made love was just after the Old Bishop’s House burned down in 1989. I met her in New York when she was on her way out of Africa for a home visit in Virginia. When I walked her to her hotel room the first night, she took my hand and pulled me through the door. She kissed me while unbuttoning my shirt. Her dress somehow slipped and fell to the floor. I started to speak. She shushed me. It was a long time before we fell asleep.

I was awake sometime before dawn. I walked to the window fronting the street. There had been many nights in countless hotel rooms when I had stood and stared out of windows, looking outward, sometimes seeing nothing. This time my back was to the window. I was looking at her as she shifted and the blanket slid down her back. I quietly walked over to the bed and gently pulled the covers over her shoulders. In her sleep, she made a soft, murmuring sound. I slouched in a chair and watched her sleep, and soon found myself breathing in her rhythm.

Over the next twelve years, Julie and I spent as much time as we could together in Europe, in between her African assignments. In 2001, we spent Christmas together in Frankfurt. It had snowed every day since she arrived. Julie loved spending her days in the Christmas Market that spread across the city center, and standing on the footbridge over the River Main at night, watching the flakes fall to the water through the orange glow of the street lamps.

When Julie was away, I worked on writing, an endeavor I had
begun in the same city so many years before. When I had first lived in Frankfurt, in an attic apartment with Kate and young Shelby, I wrote stories that I made up. Now I worked at writing the truth.

When Julie was with me, she was my life. Spending days with Julie, wrapped in winter wear, evenings passed close together under a warm down comforter, I felt I was in the present for the first time in over sixteen years. At last the past was past.

When the phone rang at 5:30 a.m. on Christmas Eve, it startled us. In the blackness, Julie groped for the receiver, knocking it off the table. She fell out of bed reaching for it. I switched on a lamp. Julie was sitting cross-legged on the floor, wearing a full sweatsuit and heavy socks. She spoke into the phone, listened a moment and handed it to me, saying, “It’s Kate.”

Before I had the phone to my ear, Julie was back under the covers and tucked in tight, falling asleep again.

“Everybody’s all right?”

“Everyone’s fine, Ren. I’m so sorry to call at this hour. But the news was just on here and I felt you would want to know this. Dubois is in the Thiberville jail again.”

“For what?”

“Here in New Orleans, the television news opened tonight with footage of him exiting a police unit in Thiberville, wearing handcuffs and leg chains, looking like an old man. He has some high-priced lawyer from here, who a TV reporter claims is close to that judge that fixed things for him when he was in prison before. Dubois’s lawyer waived extradition from Mississippi, where he’s apparently been living for a long time.”

“What’s he charged with in Thiberville?”

“He’s being held here on a rape involving a boy that the new Thiberville DA says happened in 1983. The victim only came forward when a furor erupted recently over news that Dubois had injured a three-year-old somewhere on the Mississippi coast and only got probation. The new victim in Thiberville supposedly experienced a recovered memory in therapy.”

“Un-huh,” was all I could muster as I tried to wake up and comprehend what Kate was telling me.

“There’s going to be some kind of court hearing in Thiberville about whether Dubois can be held in prison and tried for this crime committed in 1983. The charge is aggravated rape – supposedly Dubois used a gun to threaten the kid. It’s the court hearing I’m calling you about.”

“Court hearing?”

“Right. The reporter said the only witness would be you.”

“Court hearing about what?”

“Dubois’s attorney says Dubois was granted immunity in a plea agreement you negotiated with Sean Robinette back in 1985. He says it granted Dubois immunity for all crimes committed prior to ’85, so this 1983 charge must be dismissed. Ya know Sean Robinette died, and Dubois cannot be made to testify, so you are the only available witness to testify to the meaning of the language in that 1985 plea document.”

“Did they say when the court hearing would be?”

“The new DA is trying to get the plea agreement declared void. He’ll have to go to the Supreme Court in New Orleans, according to the reporter. He’s arguing that because Dubois got no medical treatment while incarcerated, he violated his side of the plea agreement. Which means the state is not bound to grant him immunity for crimes he committed before his 1985 sentencing date.”

“Okay. It will take months then for those bullshit arguments to be denied by the courts.”

“Hope it’s okay to have called about this.”

“Sure. I think I understand what’s going on. Whatever you think about Dubois’s past, in terms of the law it’s all bullshit. They threw in the gun to make it an aggravated crime because time limitations don’t run on such crimes. They’re just trying to figure out a way to lock him up forever. The DA is grandstanding, playing for the cheap seats. Under the plea agreement he has immunity for any crime committed before
October 28, 1985. They just want to go to any lengths to lock him up forever.”

“Not a bad idea,” Kate said.

“Right.”

“You have our love. Take care.”

After switching off the light, I lay for a time, staring into the blackness. Knowing I would be unable to sleep, I dressed in the warmest clothes I had and wrote Julie a note telling her I had gone out to an all-night coffee bar.

The snow had stopped. It was probably too cold to snow now. I walked two blocks to the house where I had lived with Kate and Shelby over thirty years earlier, a much simpler time. Back then, as an army clerk, I sometimes had to be at work at seven in the morning. In winter, it was too cold to stand around and wait for a streetcar, so I used to walk to work in the pre-dawn darkness. I decided to walk in that trace now, to follow the exact same path down the steep hill, under the railroad trestle, along the wide snowy avenue to the river. It was here in that first spring we lived in Frankfurt, on the grassy area along the River Main, that Shelby learned to walk.

As I approached the building where I once worked, I detoured, veering off to the Hauptbahnhof, a cavernous train station made of stone, steel and glass. I walked out to the end of a deserted platform. It was like being on the end of a jetty in an ocean with the whole world behind me. Only the blackness of night was before me.

The last chapter in the Francis Dominick Dubois saga was about to play out. I thought I knew how it would end. One way or another, I would be the one to end it. Once again the past was the present.

The Pope was dying. It was obvious to everyone in Vatican City. Most were surprised he had lasted as long as he had; some believed he would be too ill to participate in the Easter liturgy in the spring. His health was so poor that the Pope found himself considering something no other pontiff had entertained, a resignation of his office. But in the past he had always rallied, at least enough to make it through public appearances.

Behind the great facade of Saint Peter’s Basilica, in the dimly lit back corridors where the power of the Church resided, the German cardinal, Hans Kruger, continued to amass and consolidate his power. He had almost everything he had lusted for during his career.

In a move that went unnoticed by many Vatican observers, Cardinal Kruger had pushed aside a colleague and persuaded the Pope to sign a document putting him in sole charge of the ritual nine days of mourning that would follow the Pope’s death. More importantly, the position gave him full command of the conclave that would elect the Pope’s successor.

The German had firmly positioned himself to become the next supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, an event he believed would happen sooner rather than later. Vatican politics were a matter of simple mathematics. There were over a hundred cardinals who were eligible to vote in a conclave to elect the new pope, and only three had been in a conclave before. Ninety-eight
per cent of the cardinals eligible to cast a ballot had been appointed during the reign of the current pope – during years when Cardinal Hans Kruger had wielded considerable influence over everything in the Holy See, including which prelates were promoted to cardinals. Many of these cardinals owed their positions, prestige and power to the German cardinal. Kruger planned to call in his favors from these cardinals during the conclave, once a few favorites – like the Italian cardinal from Milan – had made a respectable showing on early ballots.

When he was in better health, the Pope had told Monsignor Majeski and others in his “Polish Mafia” that he prayed he would not be succeeded by the German. By the time Cardinal Kruger pushed the paper to the Pope that gave him full charge of the funeral and election of his successor, the Pope was affixing his trembling signature to almost anything.

The hearing to decide on the meaning of the 1985 plea agreement in the case of the State of Louisiana versus Francis D. Dubois was to be held in the Thiberville courtroom. The lower court judge ruled that I could be forced to testify even though I had originally served as Dubois’s defense counsel.

I was home again. This time I was to be in court as a witness, not as a lawyer.

The original plea agreement that was signed by Dubois, DA Robinette and me contained language that was standard, granting the defendant immunity for all crimes committed prior to the date of the agreement – October 28, 1985.

But it also contained troublesome language that was arguably open to interpretation. There were paragraphs relating to Dubois serving his sentence at Hannover House in New Jersey, and a paragraph about Dubois continuing medical treatment, including taking the drug Depo-Provera. Neither of those things had happened. Dubois had not served his sentence at Hannover, and he had ceased taking Depo-Provera when he entered Louisiana’s Riverbend prison.

The new DA was going to argue that Dubois did not honor the plea agreement, thus rendering the contract between Dubois and the State of Louisiana void. This would clear the way for Dubois to be prosecuted on the new rape charge and to serve the rest of his life in a Louisiana prison. If the judge found that the provisions
relating to Hannover and Depo-Provera were optional for Dubois, he would not have violated the contract. The immunity provision would hold, and Dubois would go free.

Former district attorney Sean Robinette was dead, and Francis Dubois was under indictment and had a Fifth Amendment constitutional privilege not to give testimony in the case. The only other signatory to the original plea agreement was me. It would be a one-witness affair.

I knew Dubois had to be tired of jails and that the only way he could avoid incarceration in the future would be if he left no live witnesses to testify against him. I knew that some pedophiles routinely killed their child victims and other pedophiles gradually escalated their criminal behavior to murder. On the long flight back to Louisiana, that was all I could think about. If I testified truthfully, I could be freeing Dubois to rape and murder children. I was obsessed by that possibility as I paced the aisles of the plane. It would be the toughest test I would ever face. Father Owen Dante Ellison had murdered young Bobby and Dwayne Richard in Willow Springs. In my mind there was a real possibility that if my testimony freed Francis Dubois, I would be handing him a license to kill children.

The upcoming hearing was a front-page story in
The Thiberville Register
when I arrived in Thiberville and registered at the Hilton Hotel. The national media was far more interested in the explosive stories about Cardinal Bernard Law and his covering up of clergy abuse in Boston, but a few journalists had tracked me down at my hotel and asked for my take on the scheduled hearing.

Within forty-eight hours the number of calls escalated. A few were from journalists. Some were from people I knew well, others from people I had never heard of. Some of the callers were victims of Dubois, now adults. Some people left anonymous messages. The plea was always the same: make sure you keep this animal behind bars where he cannot hurt any more children.

Only Kate and our children did not express an opinion to me about how I should testify. They called me every day. They all offered to come to Thiberville and lend support, but I did not want any of them to be near this Dubois business again.

A few days before the hearing, a candlelight vigil was held on the steps of the Thiberville courthouse, attended by victims of sexual abuse and their supporters. A local television station closed its news broadcast with film footage of the gathering – a violinist played “Amazing Grace” in the background while a lady shouted through a bullhorn, “Renon Chattelrault made a back-room deal in 1985 out of view of everyone. In that back room, Chattelrault drew up an agreement that attempted to discount, dismiss and disenfranchise every child victim of sex abuse.”

When I switched off the television, the phone rang. Hoping it was a friend, I picked it up and said nothing. Then I heard Julie’s voice.

“Hey, Ren. I’m here. In your hotel. In reception.”

“Wha…? But you’re meant to be in Africa—”

“Never mind that, Ren. What’s your room number?”

The knock came within the minute. I opened the door and she threw her arms around me in a tight hug. Once we were settled in chairs by the window, overlooking the nothingness that was suburban Thiberville, she went right to it.

“I can’t believe this is happening again.”

“It could be worse. At least no one’s threatened to kill me this time around. Not yet.”

“Could your testimony actually keep him locked up? Do you have that power?”

“Maybe. I wouldn’t have to tell a big lie. It would only amount to a little lie, a one-word lie.”

“What word?”

“‘Yes.’ I just have to say ‘Yes’ when the DA asks me if his interpretation of the plea agreement reflects the intent of those who signed the document back in ’85.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what the right thing is. A long time ago I always knew what the right thing was. People used to talk to me back then about serving the common good. I didn’t know what that was. Now, I’m sure the way to serve the common good is to do all I can to lock Dubois up forever. But I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do. If I lie, I do think he might end up locked in prison forever. But I’d have to lie. In court.”

She touched my cheek. “You okay? You look so tired.”

“That old nightmare I’ve told you about where my face is on fire – it comes almost every time I close my eyes now, so I hardly sleep.”

“God, this has gone on so long.”

“Right,” I said. “Remember the first day I met you on the swing at the Old Bishop’s House? Eighteen years ago this dominated my life. Tonight it’s dominating my life again. It will never end.”

“It will end, Ren. Everything ends. I just ended something. I quit my work in Africa. I came here to ask you to marry me.”

I laughed. “You can’t ask me to marry you. I’ve proposed twice a year for ten years. You have to accept my proposal.”

“Okay, okay. I will marry you, Renon Chattelrault. Yes!”

The next day Julie and I arranged to have lunch with my old secretary, Mo, at a small restaurant near the cathedral. While Mo was at noon Mass, Julie and I took a short walking tour. The former chancery building – Julie’s old workplace – had been converted into a storage facility for Catholic school textbooks. Through the rounded glass wall on the front of the building, we could see that the bronze busts of the dead popes were still in place.

The fountain in front of the chancery had been vandalized and was out of order. The small angel had been broken from its
pedestal, and the basin of the fountain was dry, with a layer of dust covering decaying leaves. The lot where the Old Bishop’s House once stood was cleared of everything but two partially burned trees and the brick steps that once led to the front porch where I first met Julie. In the cemetery, we sat in the iron gazebo and I pointed out where the old bum used to play fetch with his dog.

By the time Mo joined us in the café, I was feeling melancholy. Was it possible that I missed the people and places of eighteen years ago, as bad as that time had been? Missed the role I’d had, the sense of purpose? Locked in my thoughts, I recalled something Matt had said in Rome, something about the need to understand how insignificant we are, how everything counts but nothing matters.

The Old Bishop’s House and chancery no longer existed, the fountain was in ruins. These were places where I had stood up for what I believed mattered, at a time of monumental importance in my life. I had sacrificed so much in a vain attempt to achieve the impossible. Now, most of those people and places were gone, and I too was gone from Thiberville. The things I had done so long ago probably did not matter at all, maybe they did not even count.

Events had come full circle. The ragged remnants of the first historic case involving Father Francis Dominick Dubois and the Thiberville diocese were going to be adjudicated in the same courthouse where Dubois had been sentenced seventeen years earlier. Once again we were facing a court hearing that would determine whether Dubois would serve a life sentence. This mattered to the victims of Dubois and the people of the Thiberville diocese, but it hardly mattered to anyone else. The scandal was spreading from America to other countries like Canada, Australia, and Ireland and lay on the horizon in Europe and Latin America, and Thiberville was now just a footnote in the far greater crisis that was engulfing the Catholic Church. Even the National Conference of Catholic Bishops was now admitting that thousands of priests stood accused of sexually abusing children,
and that victims of these priests numbered in the many thousands. The economic losses were no longer measured in millions, but billions, and new lawsuits were being filed almost daily around the country.

Mo snapped me back into the moment as the waiter laid menus in front of us. “Bet you want those crawfish enchiladas and jambalaya. I can’t count the times I went to noon Mass and brought back enchiladas and jambalaya to the office for you.”

I laughed. “We all worship in different ways, eh, Mo! Is Pablo Sanchez still in the kitchen here?”

“Yep, he’s still the only real Mexican chef in the whole town.”

“Then, yeah, I’ll have some of his jambalaya and enchiladas.”

“Does it feel like you never left?” Mo said.

“It feels more like I was never here.”

When I returned to the hotel room, the light was blinking on the phone. The automated voice announced I had nine messages. I lay on the bed and listened to them all, smiling, then laughing. They were all from Joe Rossi. His first message said, “I knew you’d be in the Hilton. Too easy to shoot ya at a Holiday Inn.” Then, “Lookit, I’m here too ’cause there’s no place in this pissant town where anybody could have any kind of privacy.”

When I knocked on room 1124, Rossi flung the door open. He looked seventy to a hundred pounds lighter than eighteen years ago, and his clothes hung on him like a clown suit. He was an old man now, in his early eighties, and so frail I’m not sure I would have recognized him. He no longer had any strands of hair to comb over, and he was wearing thick glasses with weird blue frames.

“Goddamn son, where ya been? I miss ya. Look, I brought my own whiskey. Hotel whiskey is watered down, ya know. I got three kinds. Whatcha want? We can pretend it’s a reunion, fooking New Year’s Eve.”

“I don’t drink anymore, Joe.”

“Me neither. I don’t drink no more or no less.”

“I really don’t drink, Joe.”

“Well, that’s good. Take a Coke or something.”

We sat at the table by the window and Rossi said, “You know, I knew you was in town here. Everybody knows, huh? I used to tell ya you was crazy. You weren’t no kind of crazy, son. You was right down the line ’bout everything about the Church.”

He looked different, but he was the same guy.

“Lookit, Renon, you’re smarter than every piece of shit lawyer in this part of the world. I know I fucked up on the diocese deal. We shoulda listened to you. I think in the end it cost the diocese and insurance companies almost thirty million bucks for Dubois and the other perverted priests. The sum-bitches lost everything but the echo off the chimes at the cathedral. Bunch of priests had suits filed against them, millions were paid out. Only one besides Dubois was ever arrested, an old priest, and he died before he could be tried in court. The new DA, the local newspaper, everybody stopped investigating this stuff. Sometimes I think even the Catholics around here don’t care what priests do to children, what crimes bishops cover up, how their donations are used to pay hush money.”

I smiled. “It doesn’t matter, Joe. It really doesn’t.”

“Shit, son, and now you’re back here. There’s no end to this shit, is there?”

“I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, this Dubois guy’s like elephant shit. He’s everywhere. I want ya to know, I ain’t talking to ya today ’bout that hearing Monday. You do what ya think is right. I was always wrong, talking that shit about the common good, son.”

“I dunno, Joe. Sometimes I think I should have locked up Dubois in prison the day I met him. Thrown the key away. Things woulda turned out better for lots of people.”

“No, son, you’re wrong. Without the Dubois deal, it woulda been a helluva long time before any of this stuff woulda come out about the Church. Now it’s all over the damned world, every bishop been hiding these criminal priests. You done right down
the line. I fucked up bringing in Bendel. Hell, the whole Church fucked up, blew itself to bits. How can anyone believe in the Church anymore? I don’t, that’s sure.”

“How is Bendel? He must be getting up there in age now.”

“Shit, son, ya never heard ’bout what happened to ol’ Jon? Shit. He got dementia or something. He had married that Tammy woman who was his papoon way back then. One day ol’ Jon brings this whore to his damn house. He introduces her to Tammy, his wife. He thinks his wife is his mother. His kids got him locked up in some place in Texas for crazy rich people. He just soon be dead. Ya know, everybody else is dead but you and me, son.”

“What ya mean, Joe?”

“Well, first that crazy little monsignor barbecued himself.”

I first nodded, then shook my head. Joe had a way of saying things.

“Then Bishop Reynolds died. The newspaper said natural causes. I heard it was frostbite of the nose – ya know, from being so close to ice cubes all those years. The son-of-a-bitch was the poster boy for bad bishops, don’t ya think?”

I laughed.

“And those young buck lawyers that made millions – couldn’t handle the money. One wrecked some kind of fancy Italian car into a tree on the Bayou Saint John highway, all liquored up. The other one? Heard he got drunk and fell off his sailboat down in Florida. The bitch he was with did not know how to turn the boat around and go back to fish him out of the ocean.”