The Three Sisters (29 page)

“I can guarantee you, they’ll be praying for that until Judas Iscariot rises from the dead and is placed in Heaven at the right hand of Jesus the Just. Boy, I’d like to eavesdrop on the conversations those two’d have. Ain’t never going to
happen though.”

“OK, so what do you want from us? Good dramatic performances with shockingly scurrilous lives in America, or little flag-wavers?” asked Theodora, more cynical than usual, “It seems like either way we lose. One way the conservatives will just hate us more because of what we did, and the other way they’ll think
we’re hypocrites.”

“Hey Victor, I’ve got an idea,” said K, whose favorite game next to Scandalize the Catholics was Piss off the Protestants. “Have someone go on the
700
Club
and tell them that they’ve discovered we’re the heads of a Nun
Pornography ring.”

“Come on, K. Who’d believe that?”
asked Victor.

“They would in a heartbeat. You’ve got to remember, they’re evangelicals. They’ll believe anything. They’ll love our spurcitious sacrilege and be happy they don’t have to keep reading the Song of Solomon forever. We could have everything from how punk nuns would redesign habits to how nuns in poverty would not dress. We could have an S&M publication called
Black and White, Black and Blue
and one called
Altar Boys
for all the priests. We could have books like
The Pornographic Writings of Cardinal Newman, A Book of Spiritual and Physical Exercises
, or
The Secret Life of Pope Joan.
We could reprint all those boring, stupid anti-Catholic books that were so popular in the
1800
s, like
The Monk and the Nun, a Funny Tale
,
La Religieuse
by Diderot,
More Murder in the Nunnery. The Apocalypse of Nicolaites. On the Sins of Gomorrah
by Damian, and
Droll Tales from the Abbey of Torrain
by Balzac and others. Everybody knows that pornography is an integral part of
Papal history.”

“Or how about a movie called
Cardinal Knowledge
?”
interjected Regina.

“Do that and you girls guaranteed life in prison,” concluded Victor. “Look, just be yourselves, except you, K. Only don’t get carried away or misbehave. Gotta remember, lot of people really like you three. Some worship you almost. Young rebellious college types, liberals. Try to convince themselves they’re independent, they’re their own master. Realize they aren’t, so they live out rebellion through you. Rebel on inside, conform on outside. Buy books and other material on you three. They feel justified; we make money. Hear or read your words and agree with you completely. Mencken and all that. Rebellion just another product, Thea. Problem is, usually doesn’t give a good return
in America.”

“You really make me sick sometimes, Victor,” said Theodora. “Everything’s got to be weighed by a profit and loss statement, a balance sheet, doesn’t it? Where does it stop? If you rebel, you do it not because it makes you money, but because there’s a reason for
your rebellion.”

“Nothing new, Thea. Ecclesiastes and all that. Forefathers rebelled for money. Washington one of the richest men in America. Didn’t rebel for slaves’ sakes, you know. Jefferson had hundreds of slaves. Freed
very few.”

“What we’re trying to say,” added Father Novak, purposely interrupting Victor and Theodora, “is be careful at the trial. Don’t give your enemies too much meat to chew on. Be evasive, say you can’t remember, or you’re not sure, and maybe things will work out all right. Anyway, the worst that could happen is you’d go to prison for a
few years.”

“Easy for you to say when you’ll be sitting behind a desk making a fortune, thanks to us,”
countered K.

“Don’t forget your own fortunes, K. Not as if you three’ll be broke. Things work out like we plan, you three’ll walk out of trial millionaires. Lots of cynicism on a million dollars, K. Have all freedom to read Shakespeare and go to libraries you’d want, Thea. Russian artist’d commit suicide for that much freedom. No problem with TV, movies, Regina. What more could you
ask for?”

“All we ask is that you restrain yourselves and cooperate with us,” asked
Father Novak.

“All I can say,” warned Coito, “is if we are found guilty, your friends on the bench had better give us
probated sentences.”

Even though the Supreme Court had announced that the Trial of the Millennium would be broadcast on TV, a week before the trial was to begin, people started lining up in front of the Supreme Court building so they could see the three sisters and the Trial of the Millennium in person. There were three types of people who waited in line for the trial. The first group consisted of young and middle-aged liberals who had taken up the three sisters as their current
cause
célèbre
. The second group consisted of the religious and conservative individuals who had come to see justice done. The third and largest group of people was made up of entrepreneurs who sold their places in line to those who had the money to see the trial, but not the time to stand
in line.

For the entire week before the trial, Victor and Father Novak arranged for dozens of reporters to interview each of the three sisters. “If it’d just been the major networks and wire services, we wouldn’t’ve minded,” Regina told Victor, “but every little TV station and newspaper from every little hole-in-the-wall in the nation wants to interview us.” To save time, the three were put in round-robin interviews (known to journalists as gang bangs) which would provide the maximum amount of publicity with the minimum amount of effort. But even with this change, the three were left with little time to be
by themselves.

“
Believe me, by the end of the week we were looking forward to the trial,”
promised Coito.

The media explored any and all subjects in the least bit related to the three heretics. There were reports on Catholicism in America, being a nun, becoming a nun, nuns leaving the Church, the future of religious orders, sin in America, the future of the Catholic Church itself, the renewal of faith in America, and so forth. The media eventually took their token look at how well they were covering the case of the three sisters—whether their coverage had pandered to the publicity the three wanted and whether the media had been biased in its reporting. It goes without saying that this pressing question received the same answer as always: despite minor excesses, all in all, the media remained the least biased source of information available to the public. Thus it
excused itself.

Meanwhile, the government was preparing for the upcoming trial. Inside the Supreme Court building, two side corridors around the room had originally been set aside for the media, but when this was discovered by the House and Senate, members of Congress complained that they, by virtue of their constitutional right of judicial review, deserved priority status at the Supreme Court’s trial. To placate Congress, the Justices granted the Senators and Representatives a partial victory by allowing them the right-hand corridor and the media the left-hand corridor. How to apportion the seats in these confined areas was left up to Congress.

The public would be allowed to sit in the center of the room and would be quietly rotated every thirty minutes. The three sisters and lawyers for the defense and prosecution would be given the first row of seats facing the Justices. Witnesses had a special chair reserved for them to the Justices’ left. For those not lucky enough to attend the trial personally, the three TV networks arranged a rotating schedule for showing the trial’s proceedings as had been done during the House’s Watergate hearings. Two cameras were installed for the public’s
viewing pleasure.

While the Supreme Court building was being prepared, lawyers for the prosecution and the defense worked on their cases. For the prosecution, the Trial of the Millennium seemed a mere exercise. The evidence against the three was so solid, the prospect of conviction so certain, that their only concern was that some mistake, some legal
faux pas
or omission on their behalf might negate their efforts. The government’s plan for convicting the three sisters was simple. By replaying the confessions of Coito and Regina, and the exomologesis of Theodora, all the proof they needed of the three’s participation in the crimes they were accused of committing was already available. To add to the weight of the evidence against the three, the government would corroborate the admissions of guilt with testimony from the Rams, the three Washington Monument National Parks Service employees, Benny Ditkus, Tony Olisbos, Sheriff Kazan, Mrs. Worthington,
and others.

The Trial of the Millennium could have been of the highest dramatic order had not Father Novak and Victor Virga already told the public everything they ever wanted to know about the three during the Confessions. Though there remained little startling news to reveal, the prosecution, defense, and the Justices hoped that the possibility of an unexpected development as well as interest in the verdict and sentencing (if necessary) would keep the public interested in the proceedings.

The remainder of the trial continued apace with no more unexpected revelations. Surprisingly, despite the Confessions, the trial received high Nielsen ratings. One TV executive opined that what kept people interested in the trial was the presentation of testimony from the “victims” of the three sisters’ alleged crimes. The audience wanted to know what others thought of the three, not just what they had done. Each witness in turn gave his or her testimony which, together with the three’s confessions, made it clear that the three sisters had committed the crimes of which they
were accused.

The Trial of the Millennium finished on October
24
when final arguments for the defense and prosecution were presented. The verdict in the case was scheduled to be read on Monday, October
29
with sentencing, if necessary, to be carried out on the following Monday. To sum up the closing weeks of the trial, an article published by
The Economist
is reprinted below.

No
Ingénues They

T
he trial of the three sisters wrapped up on Wednesday after three-and-a-half weeks of verbal assault by the prosecution and its witnesses upon the defendants. In the entire trial, there was hardly a good word said for the three sisters, save for the Rams who put in some kind remarks for Ms. Suora, and twelve-year-old Bernard Ditkus who seemed infatuated with
Ms. Grant.

With the TV cameras in the courtroom following every detail, one often wondered whether the witnesses were giving testimony or making a pretense of being actors and actresses. And in the case of several self-righteous victims of the three (Ms. Worthington, I presume), whether they were witnessing against the defendants or witnessing
for Christ.

The three’s defense was facile, hackneyed, and did naught to help them. The argument offered in their favor was that the three meant malice toward none. This may be true, but it hardly absolves them of the crimes they are accused of. The three’s lawyers were unpardonably dull and tried to make their clients seem unnaturally (and unbelievably) harmless. This goody-two-shoes pretense was doomed to fail since Ms. Gott’s actions inevitably contradicted her lawyers’ defense every time she spoke, making one wonder why her lawyers had ever considered such an
inappropriate strategy.

There were memorable events at the trial. First up before the nine Justices were the witnesses and victims of the three’s alleged criminal activities in Tennessee. The least damaging testimony against the three was given by the Sheriff of the town which the three originally escaped from back in May. Sheriff Kazan, who was recently defeated in his re-election attempt, is not an intelligent man as he ably demonstrated, and the defense tore his testimony to shreds making his statements worthless. The defense scored some points when the sheriff admitted he had considered dropping the charges against the three at one point, though he promised this occurred before Tony Olisbos had taken up auto theft as
a career.

The Brothers Warring who witnessed the erstwhile nuns’ escape acted absentmindedly while on the witness stand. They were captivated by Regina who flirted with them until she was cited for contempt of court and removed for her disrupting influence. All in all, the only Tennesseean who gave any credible testimony was Ms. Worthington who discovered the now (in)famous break-in at the Second First Baptist Church of Lewisville where she plays the church’s piano. The prosecution was lucky the three sisters had already done their work for them by confessing their
crimes publically.