Wages Of Sin (Luis Chavez Book 3)

by Mark Wheaton

  “How have you been?” Luis asked.

  “Getting by,” Miguel said with an air of a man twice his age. “You?”

  “Same,” Luis said hoarsely.

  “Good to know,” Miguel replied. “I was sorry to hear about your pastor. Seemed like a good guy.”

  “I lost more of myself than I thought I would when he died.”

  “I know how you feel,” Miguel said. “My mother was the person that kept me tethered to the planet. My uncle, too. Like, everything was okay as long as I had them to fall back on. They were a constant. When they died, it was like gravity got weak all of a sudden. Nothing mattered. No one was there to hold me accountable.”

  Luis looked down. He knew Miguel wasn’t trying to make him feel bad, but he did anyway. Miguel sighed.

  “Hey, you’re not hearing me,” Miguel said, leaning across the table. “I’m saying how I felt. Past tense. What I’ve learned since is that I have to hold myself accountable. That’s all that matters. I know what I’m doing right now, criming and all, is untenable. I keep it up, and it’ll catch up to me. So now I’m winding it down. I’m doing all the favors I need to do in the short term so that when I walk out it’s all good. No one gets mad and no one gets hurt. Then I start over somewhere.”

  “Like where?”

  “I’ve heard Buenos Aires is nice,” Miguel said.

  Luis laughed. Miguel tapped the table.

  “So who’s holding you accountable these days?” Miguel asked thoughtfully.

  “I thought it was God,” Luis said. “But then I had to do without for a few months and learned that it wasn’t his job. So now I’m on point. Things are going better.”

  “Cool. You’re a good priest. A semi-busted man sometimes, but a really good priest,” Miguel said. He reached into a backpack that was slung over the back of his chair and pulled out a thick file folder. “This is what you asked for, right? I was sorry to hear about how things went down in Mexico, but that’s Mexico, right? Different world.”

  “Yeah.”

  Miguel slid the file across the table. Luis flipped it open and glanced at the pages. For better or worse, it was all there in black and white. What good it would do, he didn’t know.

  “Thank you,” Luis said.

  “It’s all right,” Miguel replied. “By the way, I heard through the grapevine that the guy who carved you up washed up dead in Lake Chapala last night.”

  “Munuera?” Luis asked in surprise.

  “Yeah, hasty-execution-style. The cartels haven’t gone to war over it, so I’m thinking it was an outside contractor. If I had to put money on it, I’d say it was somebody who works with my new friend Archipenko. He’s got all sorts of buddies out there who owe him favors. Cold bastards, too. Wouldn’t be surprised if someone was trying to make him happy by taking out the guy that took out his voice box.”

  Luis was thinking Oscar, but the timing didn’t work out.

  “A guy like Munuera makes a lot of enemies,” Miguel concluded.

  “Yeah, but he just jumps to another body,” Luis said. “There’ll be another Munuera tomorrow if there isn’t already one today.”

  Miguel eyed Luis querulously for a moment, then looked as if he might bust out laughing. “That’s pretty hardcore, Father. Maybe you should be writing heavy metal songs or something. A track for Brujeria, maybe Sepultura. They’d listen to a priest.”

  Luis chuckled too now. He asked Miguel more about where he hoped things were heading, and the teen told him. He spoke of his hopes, fears, and problems. Luis listened, gave the best advice he could when pressed, then listened some more. By the end of it, Miguel was asking if they could meet up again sometime.

  “Of course,” Luis said. “Drop me a line anytime.”

  “Will do,” Miguel replied, rising to shake Luis’s hand. “Though it might come up from Argentina.”

  “Here’s hoping.”

  They went their separate ways, Luis taking the file folder with him.

  The seat of the Los Angeles archdiocese at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels was a short distance away on Temple. It was an ultra-modern blocky building of marble that looked like unfinished wood. Our Lady of the Angels stood in striking contrast to the Metropolitan Cathedral, right down to the great Robert Graham–sculpted bronze doors that contained an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, as well as several other representations of more mystical stories from the Bible.

  When Luis entered, he made his way to the administrative wing, an equally modern area of high white marble walls, interrupted by stained-glass panels. There were as many secular visitors in the wing as there were clergy, only adding to the feel that it was more like a hallowed concert hall or university building than a cathedral.

  When he reached the archbishop’s office, he gave his name to the priest out front and took a seat in the plush chair opposite the doors leading into the archbishop’s private chamber. He’d met His Excellency on a number of occasions, but only after he’d solved the murder of a Chinese-American priest in San Gabriel did the man begin to recognize him at diocesan functions. Luis didn’t know what to think of the archbishop really, as he seemed like a good sort but ambitious in a way Pastor Whillans had conditioned him to be suspicious of.

  It didn’t mean he was a bad man, however, particularly when compared to LA’s previous archbishop. His predecessor had gone into semi-exile, surrounded by a cloud of shame relating to the worldwide molestation scandal and its cover-up, which had threatened to permanently tarnish the image of the church.

  “Father Chavez?” said the young priest behind the desk. “His Excellency is ready to see you.”

  “Thank you,” Luis said as the priest touched a button and the doors behind him opened automatically.

  As Luis entered the archbishop’s chambers, the man himself was already in motion, moving toward him. “The inimitable Father Chavez! Welcome! Thank you for seeing me.”

  “Thank you, Your Excellency,” Luis said, recalling that it was he who had asked for the appointment.

  “Please, sit with me,” the archbishop said, leading Luis to a pair of chairs near a grand portrait of Bishop Alphonse Gallegos, the late director of the office of Hispanic Affairs for the California Catholic Conference. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m hoping quite a bit,” Luis said, taking his phone from his pocket. “I am at something of a dead end.”

  “Oh? Is it a crisis of faith?”

  “Far from it,” Luis said. “More like a restoration. But in the process I came across something very troubling.”

  “Another of your investigations?” the archbishop said cautiously. “Does this relate to Bishop Osorio? I know you were close with him.”

  “While I knew him well, calling us close is something of an overstatement.”

  The archbishop didn’t seem to know what to do with this information and simply nodded. “His death threw many of us here for a loop.”

  “Then I can only imagine what his resurrection will do,” Luis replied.

  He dug into his pocket and extracted his phone. He selected the video Oscar had shown him and played it for the archbishop. As the senior priest watched, his eyes grew wide in horror.

  “What is this?” he asked, bewildered.

  “Bishop Osorio faked his own death, allowing Father Belbenoit to die and me to be almost mortally wounded in the process. Until this morning he was living on that small estate east of Tijuana.”

  The archbishop sank back in his chair, putting a hand over his eyes. “My goodness. Are you certain he was alive?”

  “Yes,” Luis said. “I was there this morning when he died. For real this time.”

  The archbishop’s head wagged back and forth a moment. When he stilled it, he looked Luis directly in the eyes. “Start at the beginning.”

  Luis did. He told the archbishop about Charles Sittenfeld and the murder of Naomi Okpewho. He explained how this had led a deputy DA to link the banks with the cartels but then identified the
Catholic Church as the middleman between the two in a billion-dollar money-laundering arrangement. He laid out his trip to Mexico City and how many priests across Mexico were taking money from the cartels and sending it to the archdiocese or using it in their own parishes, as he saw in action in El Tule. He explained how it was his own brother who would have been the very first whistleblower if he hadn’t been murdered so many years ago now.

  He concluded by explaining how an arrangement between the Justice Department and Sittenfeld’s bank, the so-called largest fine in US history, wiped it all off the books. There would be no arrests, no trials, no fingers pointed at the church, as, after all, it was the Mexico City archdiocese that was to blame, not the Los Angeles one.

  Save Bishop Osorio, of course.

  When Luis was done, the archbishop’s face was drained of color. “Can this be true?” he asked.

  Luis placed the folder Miguel had prepared for him in front of the archbishop. “It’s all here. But yes, obtained illegally and thereby impossible to use in a court of law. But as I have told our DA, his job is to deal in what can be proven. We in the church deal in belief.”

  The archbishop looked over the contents of the file folder as if the very pages would leave poison on his fingertips. It took him five minutes to get to the end, but then he closed it and held it close to his chest.

  “Are there other copies of these records?” he asked.

  “This is the only one I have,” Luis said. “And I’ve been led to believe even they might be scrubbed from the Mexico City archdiocese’s database at some point in the near future. I’m pretty sure the district attorney has a copy, too, but there’s nothing he can really do with it.”

  Luis couldn’t tell what the man was thinking. Yes, without legal repercussions, this was a scandal that could easily go away. The archbishop rose to his feet, went to his intercom, and called in the young priest who was seated outside. He handed over the file folder, then turned to Luis.

  “Then we need to make copies.”

  The archbishop sent the young priest away with instructions to make at least a hundred copies and bring him back the originals. As the priest exited, the archbishop sat back down in front of Luis.

  “We cannot go back to the arrogance of the past,” the archbishop said. “It’s cost us too much already. If this cannot or will not be handled by the local legal authorities, it’s incumbent upon the church to do its own policing, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes,” Luis replied evenly.

  “Are we sure Bishop Osorio was the only priest within our archdiocese involved?”

  “No,” Luis said. “We’re not.”

  The archbishop nodded. “Then we’ll start an internal investigation but ask the Holy See to begin one in parallel. Complete transparency. What was the office they created to investigate the Calvi scandal?”

  “The IOR.”

  “We’ll call them,” the archbishop said. “And I believe that there is no one finer in our own archdiocese than you, Father Chavez, to lead the internal investigation.”

  Luis bowed his head for a moment but then rose to his feet and extended his hand. “I appreciate the gesture, Your Excellency, but I cannot accept.”

  “If you’re worried about your commitments to your parishioners, we can make any accommodation that works for you.”

  “No, Your Excellency. It’s not that. I came here today to resign my office and leave the church. Effective immediately.”

  It seemed as if this was an even larger shock to the archbishop than the contents of the file folder.

  “But why?” the archbishop asked. “There’s so much good work to be done. We need men like you. We’re desperate for men like you who can lead the church forward. Is it a question of your relationship to God?”

  “No, thankfully,” Luis said. “I have consulted with the Almighty in prayer and believe this is precisely what he wishes me to do.”

  “I don’t mean to speak hyperbolically, but your loss to this archdiocese is nothing short of catastrophic I fear.”

  Luis put his hand on the archbishop’s shoulder. “Have faith, Your Eminence. I am but a vessel.”

  With that, Luis walked out of the archbishop’s office.

  As he passed through the Robert Graham doors, Luis was surprised to feel more himself than he had in some time. He had been a priest for little more than a year and learned so much, but it wasn’t enough. Not for the responsibilities that had been placed in front of him and the challenges that followed.

  He needed to learn more. He had to make himself more.

  As he went to retrieve the parish car which he would be returning to St. Augustine’s for the last time, he found himself staring at a building a number of blocks down Grand. It called to him like a Siren, and he began to walk toward it. With every step a sense of familiarity swelled within him. When he could finally read the sign up top, “California Hospital Medical Center,” he felt tears come to his eyes and he found a bus bench to sit down on.

  California Hospital, where his brother had been born thirty years before on this very date. Somewhere in that warren of examination rooms and surgical suites, Nicolas had breathed his first breath. Luis closed his eyes and for the first time was able to hear his brother’s voice as plain as day. It was a miraculous feeling.

  Will you pray with me, Luis?

  The words were indistinguishable as memory or whispered that moment, but Luis heard them as clear as he heard his own thoughts. He closed his eyes, bowed his head, and prayed.

  And he felt peace.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author would like to acknowledge the many talented people who contributed their time, intelligence, and ideas to this book, beginning with, as always, my indefatigable first reader and editor, Lisa French, who is the first to see anything I type and rewards my labors with sheets and sheets of red-stained pages in return. Also, Charlotte Herscher, my developmental editor, to whom I owe any positive word said about these books and whom I toast often and heartily. She is a marvel and often knows the story better than I ever will. In addition, I would like to thank my friend and editor Jacque BenZekry, whose continued faith in this series has allowed it to develop and evolve over the past two years. I can only hope that I and it have lived up to her exacting standards. My long-suffering agent, Laura Dail, deserves my thanks and gratitude, not only for her faith and enthusiasm for this series but also because she must endure endless e-mails pitching mad and crazy ideas for crime stories that she bats away with great aplomb and more courtesy than I’d ever manage. Thanks also to Sarah Shaw at Thomas & Mercer just for being awesome.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2015 Morna Ciraki

  Born in Texas, author Mark Wheaton now lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children. Before penning his Luis Chavez novels, he was a screenwriter, producer, and journalist, writing for the Hollywood Reporter, Total Film, and more.