by Declan Finn
Dignified NEW YORK TIMES readers found it reported in the local crime section, just in front of the sports pages in the back of the paper. NEWSDAY did a cover story, with photo, blaring NUN WITH HERPES.
The diocesan authorities were silent. The order refused comment. James and Gus went back to a siege-state format to repel the Fourth Estate—and succeeded: the press were kept at bay until the howling pack went after the Presidential candidates.
From March until June, they had some peace. The semester ended for James, the parish societies had disbanded until after Labor Day, and James followed suit by disbanding the Hijos de Dio for the summer.
From his mid-June vantage point, James reviewed the recent past with some small contentment. There were no dust-ups at Cambridge, the rectory was feeding his inherent tendencies to bachelorhood, and even Abby had apparently become reconciled to a Monday-night routine of dinner for two—or three depending upon Gus’s loneliness. The conversation settled into discussions of books, movies, tales from the rectory, the lab, or the college. James was cheerfully oblivious to even the existence of his mother or his sister. The habitually stiff James was even unbending under the influence of less reading, less smoking, and a small increase in his intake of Frangelico liquor.
He finished his postprandial tot at the rectory one evening and sighed. “You know, Gus, I’m a little sorry to hear that your Latin American connections have finally come through with another priest.”
“Don’t pack yet. He isn’t here yet and won’t until sometime around the middle of July.”
“Yeah, I know but I couldn’t help reviewing the times I’ve been here. Giving out ashes to stragglers on Ash Wednesday, distributing communion of Sundays, being number two liturgist during Holy Week…”
“Chopping ice in February, shoveling snow in March, cleaning leaves out of drain spouts in April, and chasing the first hookers of Spring from the front steps are all the things you have come to know and love?” responded Gus with heavy humor. “In that case, wait for the little monsters to show up for summer school.”
“No, Your Holiness, not even you can rain on my parade today. The Hijas went from ten to thirty between the time I arrived and our last meeting. Of the original ten, I only lost Pedro Mendoza and Margarita Gomez. I’ve gotten a higher ration of college-bound than I ever expected, and even the ratio of males to females has remained at rough equality.”
Gus leaned in. “Since you’re flying so high, let me grant you all your points of pride and add a few. I do not miss counting the collection, or writing certificates, or even writing the monthly begging letter to the Bishop asking for this month’s subsidy check. You have handled that all with speed and efficiency.”
James’ eyebrows shot up as a cynical feeling began to seep in to his bones. “Such graciousness… what do you want?”
“You want to run our summer school on a day-worker basis?”
“Ugh. I knew there was a catch. Why must all of your compliments be merely bait on the hook?” He did not wait for a response but continued asking questions as if to himself. “Do I want to supervise young teenagers mentoring little kids through eight hot weeks? Do I want to ruin the summer school during the mating season? (Theirs, not mine.) Do I recall you giving me a story about the twelve-year-old nymphette playing show-and-tell sex goddess with the fourteen-year-olds who were supposed to be minding the eight-year-olds? Do I look crazy just because I’ve been living in this bug house for the last four months? No, I thank you, no.”
Gus’s disappointment was obvious.
“I tell you what I will do,” James continued. “I will continue to mind the house on Sundays and that will permit me to count the collection, post all the baptisms, weddings, confirmations, and whatnot in the book and in the card file system, and generally leave you free to get out for Sunday dinner and maintain a modicum of your limited sanity. Deal?”
“Deal.”
James smiled, firmly convinced that he had put one over on Gus. The pastor had insisted that James draw a monthly paycheck, and, if he ‘forgot,’ Gus usually caught on to it by the fifth week and physically handed him the check. James had firm instructions to cash the check or it would louse up the records of the diocesan accountant. But once cashed, who cared how or where he spent his own money? To avoid fights with Bill, James simply made the collections remain constant from week to week instead of the usual post-Memorial Day drop for the summer season.
James discovered he had acquired a taste for sneaky benevolence.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TRIAL
MONDAY, JUNE 28TH, 1976
THE case of The People of the State of New York v. Neuhaus began on the last Monday in June. James sat through most of the trial, wondering from the first why her lawyer had not fed the media from March to June, why the scheduling for the depths of summer, why defense counsel had opted for a get-it-on and get-it-over-with approach. James decided that the usual ‘delay, delay, and delay some more’ tactics to let it all fade from the passions of the moment just would not work in the present case.
On the prosecution side, there was damn little that passed without complications. Ab initio, there were damn few judges who would go anywhere near it. If the charges were true and the nun were convicted, the religious persuasion of the trial judge would become a target of opportunity for appeals. In addition to this, the Chief Administrative Judge of the state had his hand in some very popular judicial decisions within the last year and was now rumored to follow Chief Justice Taft in seeking a career in both the judicial and executive branches of government, at least on the state level. Fate was kind in giving him a judge who could handle such a case.
Benjamin Cardozo Levy was as close to sacrosanct as a criminal court judge could get. In private life, he was known for his generosity to the United Way, The United Jewish Appeal, The Bishop’s Fund for Catholic Education, and the National Council of Churches’ Brotherhood Week. The son of a druggist, he took his BS in Pharmacy, followed by a law degree and thirty profitable years supporting political campaigns as a useful hobby. When Levy took early retirement from The World’s Largest Pharmaceutical Company, Governor Carey appointed him to the bench in recognition of his service on dollar-a-year commissions (and the two million he had raised in contributions for all of the past campaigns, stretching back to the House of Representatives for then-young, then-congressman Carey).
Within six months of his appointment, Judge Levy conceded that the habits of a lifetime would be impossible to break. He threw himself in charity work with a violence that startled his friends. When accosted by the more brazen of his acquaintances to explain this sudden interest in organized benevolence, His Honor is reported to have growled, “It’s the only damn thing a Judge is allowed to do with his free time.” When it was suggested that he might associate himself with a law school or lecture on legal education, his remarks became what is quaintly called “colorful” on the subject of all of New York City’s Law Schools and the quality of the ABA’s public education program.
Either Levy was a religious man or he wasn’t. No one the Chief Judge asked actually knew. If Levy were an atheist or a Unitarian Universalist who believed in (at most) one god (lower case), he never advertised his beliefs. This made it safer to take the approach that anyone who attacks a judge named Levy must be antisemitic and therefore not worthy of judicial attention. And, after nine sane years on the bench, Levy was not expected to something crazy now.
Despite his reputation as a crafty, devious, and creative five-hundred-pound legal gorilla, who had spent his commercial life protecting his company from the government and the public, Levy had a wise and learned look rather like David Opatashu playing a rabbi…only with a full head of wavy white hair. His face matched the gravity of the trial’s subject matter without losing his obvious desire to keep the proceedings moving briskly along. And move they did.
The religious order that MJ Neuhaus belonged to conformed to a lower-class Irish stereotype which James had beli
eved long dead: they had hired a Jewish lawyer, Mister Jake Boskovitch. James found the stereotyping an offensive form of game playing, but was no more pleased with the Brooklyn DA for ducking this prosecution and assigning it to a very junior ADA named Blair Porter, because she would be better able to wring mileage from her youth, femininity, and hunger for advancement.
Jake Boskovitch was at least a seasoned, competitive, argumentative defense attorney. James hoped that the order had chosen on the basis of competence as well as stereotype.
Like a pregame announcer, James tried to give odds based on opening statements. Ms. Porter was short, slight built, and made her presentation in a quiet authoritative style in which her words, her delivery, and even her clothes seemed like the voice of reason and the conscience of the community. Boskovitch was fat, middle aged, and looked as if he were under constant harassment from his wife’s divorce lawyer. The pose usually worked, since jurors never knew of his happy marriage. His expensive tailoring and solid gold accessories nicely conveyed the image of a terribly busy, terribly successful man who was taking time out from his other concerns to defend this poor little girl of religious inclinations.
When he mentioned Mary Jane’s piety to the jury, James was impressed despite himself and despite knowing better. MJ had shed thirty pounds, was dressed in a conservative religious habit down to mid-calf, with a matching short veil on her head. She was the picture of youthful innocence.
“First time she’s been in habit in ten years,” whispered Gus.
James barely managed to not laugh.
James has found the body and was therefore the State’s first witness. He recited the events of Friday morning and was dismissed from cross examination by Boskovitch “subject to later recall.”
The chain of evidence played out. The first police on the scene, then Detective Andrew Washington, then the medical examiner traced the path of the corpse through to the autopsy. Each one of the findings of the Medical Examiner’s office fought their way into the record over strenuous objection: Lessner’s near comatose blood-alcohol level, his case of genital herpes (about which Levy threatened to clear the court if the tittering didn’t stop), and, most damaging, the bruise between the shoulder blades which was inconsistent with the fall but consistent with the possibility that he was struck or punched just before he fell.
James did notice that every additional detail only made Gus more and more upset, but he assumed that the older man was recalling his curate of happier and soberer times.
A police artist introduced sketches of the body relative to the staircase and of Tim’s rooms relative to those of James and Gus.
The second day was devoted to the defendant herself.
The mother superior, a clearly hostile witness, begrudgingly admitted that Sister Mary triggered off the convent alarm systems shortly after midnight on the night Father Lessner died. She characterized the act as one of clumsiness, but did admit that sister’s behavior was consistent with that of someone who was drunk or drugged or who had received a bad shock.
James was recalled to relate the events of Wednesday night: the rhythmic sound of the bed springs, the physical appearance of Tim and Mary Jane. Boskovitch went wild on cross examination, but the DA’s staff had prepared James well: he simply slowed down his answers, allowed three seconds to go by between the questions and his answers. He only blew it once, getting angry when Boskovitch suggested that, as the only one admittedly in the house at the time, James was the only person who could have killed Father Timothy Lessner.
“After all!” Boskovitch screamed. “You’d already gotten into one altercation with the victim. Why not again? You shoved him into a safe door the first time. Why not some stairs the second time?”
After gavelling the courtroom back to order, Judge Levy called counsel to the bench.
James heard Levy’s intense whisper: “Jake, cut the Perry Mason crap. I will not permit the circus in my courtroom. If you’ve got something, let’s go into chambers.”
“That won’t be necessary, Your Honor,” smiled Boskovitch.
“Didn’t think so. Step Back. Any further questions of this witness?”
“Not at this time.”
“Witness dismissed, subject to recall.”
James, shaking with rage, returned to the audience side of the bar.
(As Abby’s brother the lawyer explained later to a still-upset James, “If a lawyer did not make everybody else look guilty he would be accused of giving his client a less than maximum defense, and that’s grounds for legal discipline. Anyway, making the victim look like the guilty party is also an old technique. Don’t let it bother you, the next homicidal manic comes along and the last one is soon forgotten and in New York, that’s about two weeks.”)
Detective Washington was recalled and identified two keys which were on the defendant’s key ring at the time of her arrest. He further testified that the investigation had identified them as the keys to the rear door of the rectory and to Tim’s apartment.
James looked at Gus and only got a puzzled shrug in response. Tim’s keys had been among Tim’s possessions after the death. Gus, Bill, Tim, MJ, and the housekeeper were the only people with keys. If anyone else had done it how did he/she/it get out of the house?
The police doctor was called back to review his testimony on the nature of genital herpes and the tests done on both the defendant and the deceased. Boskovitch asked if the doctor was aware of the California toilet seat experiments? The ones which showed that the virus was still active after thirty minutes in the open air? Yes, the doctor was familiar with the data on herpes, was aware that there was some cross-vaccination type of immunization from simple cold-sore herpes, and was also aware that the California experiments were unable to be reproduced, and were generally considered to be “experimental error.” Boskovitch scored no points there.
On the third day, the defense put on more of its own fireworks.
First they called Father Sadowski and reviewed the whole history of his conflicts with Father Lessner. James admired the adroitness with which Gus avoided even the least hint of the pornographic materials James had carted away.
Boskovitch made the same suggestion he had made about James: since the death was only established within a range of time, was there any way to assure the jury that Father Sadowski hadn’t carried out his old fashioned notions of heresy the old-fashioned way…by killing the heretic?
Father Sadowski just smiled while Blair Porter made her objections and the court overruled her. “I can no more prove a negative fact,” responded Sadowski equably, “than I can prove that you have stopped molesting little girls.”
Needless to say, that amused the audience, raised Boskovitch’s blood pressure, drew Gus a reprimand from the Judge, and a dismissal with no further questions.
The prosecution in rebuttal put Dominique Aristides and Deke Kaminsky in the witness box to account for the larger part of Sadowski’s time at bingo that night.
Boskovitch summed up with great histrionics, conjuring up the image of religious persecutions worldwide (What has that got to do with anything when all those involved are Catholics? James wondered), puncturing evidence with great sarcasm, and strongly hinting at James as the true killer. With what reason? Well, who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of philosophy professors from New Jersey?
Blair Porter ended as she began: These are the facts, these are the reasons, “And even the hurt of a jilted and betrayed woman, in a relationship which betrayed her own solemn vow to God, even her great distress at realizing that her lover gave her a disease which he obviously got by sexual activity with a third party (for we have no reason to think she gave it to him). All this will not excuse, will not condone, and will not permit her to take her lover’s life. I ask you to find for the state.”
The judges instructions ran through all the options from murder one through manslaughter to innocence with a strong recommendation that the religious element which had figured so prominently in the case shoul
d not be a part of the jury’s decision: “the issue is not adultery, or fornication, or religious infidelity, the issue before you is murder.”
The jury deliberated for three days.
On the fourth day, the newspaper showed the joyous sisters hugging their confrere, congratulating her on beating the rap.
James found some consolation in the police statement that “As far as we are concerned the case is closed.” James didn’t want to be on trial himself.
When protests arose, when a dozen nuns picketed police headquarters, maintaining that the police statement was a slander on Sister Neuhaus, a female police spokesperson observed: “that statement can be read many ways. We presented the best results of our investigation to the district attorney’s office, which in turn made a decision, which in turn the jury reversed. Maybe it was an accident, who knows? Anybody wants to read the statement as contesting the jury’s verdict has a perfect right to do so, but you can’t ascribe their reading to the department’s intent in issuing the statement.”
In answer to a followup question, she said, “There is no evidence of anyone else being in the house at the time of the death and there is no motive for the one other person who was in the house at the time.”
The Bishop’s press conference was trickier. “This is the American Way: justice must not only be done it must be seen to be done. The jury and the court have spoken, the criminal case is closed.”
“Does that mean there is some kind of Church case still pending against Sister Neuhaus?” asked Geraldo Martinez for Slywitness news.
Bishop Lousini laughed. “Jerry, the Spanish Inquisition will live as long as you are on the air. Sister Neuhaus will be given plenty of time to analyze her situation and make her own future career plans. Of course, if you wish to continue a medieval inquiry, I suggest that your proper Dark Ages course of action would be to lay siege to her residence.”
Most station editors left on the cutting room floor the sound of laughter of newspapermen and some broadcast reporters at the discomfort of their more obnoxious colleague.
